Service workers already have another thankless job: Checking vaccine status

As the delta variant prolongs the Covid-19 pandemic, three major U.S. cities — San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York — have begun introducing vaccine requirements for anyone who visits indoors. public spaces such as restaurants, cinemas and gyms. Other settlements may soon follow suit: Honolulu will introduce a passport system for vaccines this month (patrons may also pass a recent negative test for Covid-19), while the Los Angeles City Council is considering a similar program. But this new evidence of vaccination rules is already creating new problems for establishments and workers, who are largely left to figure out how to enforce the requirements and how to react when angry customers are repulsed.

It all fits into the larger model of how the United States coped with the pandemic. The introduction of different vaccination and mask requirements in the United States is uneven. The White House has said it will not create a national passport system for vaccines, which means that states, cities and even private companies have built their own versions of passport applications for vaccines (while some states, such as Florida, have banned vaccine passports altogether) . This checkered approach means that despite the wide availability of vaccine recording applications, the only standardized way in the United States to prove your vaccination status is the fragile and easy-to-lose CDC paper card, which does not quite fit into the average portfolio of person.

“A man came in and said to the bartender, ‘I want to see your hepatitis and your AIDS vaccine,'” Candice Hutchinson, a manager at Beachcorner Bar and Grill in New Orleans, who often greets customers, told Recode. Business has shrunk by at least a quarter since the New Orleans indoor vaccine mandate took effect on Aug. 16, another Beachcorner manager, Gina Perret, told Recode, and some customers are revolting. A customer recently threw a drink in the face of an employee because of the new rules.

One of the effects of these vaccine rules is that they seem to stimulate some people to get the vaccine. Last month, 99 participants in the New Orleans Saints game were vaccinated on the spot just to be able to enter the arena. In some regions of Italy, vaccination rates have risen to 200% after the country introduced its national Green Pass system, which requires people to provide proof of vaccination to enter indoor establishments such as restaurants and museums using a digital or paper version of vaccine recording. France, which recently began demanding proof of vaccination for indoor and outdoor meals, domestic flights and other indoor activities, has seen a similar boost in vaccinations.

But another effect of the new requirements is that they place the responsibility for enforcing public health regulations on service workers who, during the pandemic, have already had to deal with abuses by certain customers in temperature checks, wearing masks and social distancing. In fact, 80 percent of service workers surveyed by the One Fair Wage group last fall, which advocated minimum wages for tips workers, said they had seen or experienced hostility, including racism and sexual harassment, from customers. while enforcing public health rules during a pandemic. That’s why some large retailers operating in areas without vaccine mandates avoid requiring vaccination evidence for customers, according to a CNN report: They don’t have the infrastructure to verify IDs and fear that enforcing such a requirement could lead to problems for workers.

That leaves service workers with two bad opportunities, One Fair Wage co-founder and president Saru Jayaraman told Recode. They can enforce the rules and risk harassment and lost advice, or they can ignore dangerous customer behavior and endanger their own health.

Some places in New York told Recode that despite some opposition, most customers are happy to show off their vaccines. But it’s not just customers who need to worry about workers. After Jen Ag, the owner of Bar Vendetta in Toronto, called for requirements for indoor vaccines, her restaurant was flooded with protesters against vaccine passports, who, she recently told a radio station, “harass my staff and yell at me, yell at me.” my face that we are Nazis. ”

At the same time, restaurant hosts and greeters are not necessarily prepared to check vaccine documents or ID cards (New York, for example, is requiring that the indoor venues confirm that the state document of the patron coincides with the name in their vaccine document). Melissa Fleischutt, president and CEO of the New York State Association of Restaurants, told Recode that most of the 40 restaurant operators she spoke to in person said they were confused or had problems with the implementation of the new vaccine rules for customers.

Cities such as New York and New Orleans said they provide resources for restaurants and other establishments aimed at facilitating the implementation of vaccine passport systems, including pre-implementation grace periods and a video of conflict resolution training, but measures such as these seem quite limited. For example, Louisiana and New York State have launched vaccine passport applications that produce vaccine records based on a QR code, an alternative to CDC paper maps. While QR codes are meant to be scanned for verification, several establishments told Recode that they are currently simply looking at people’s QR codes on their phones and not actually scanning them in a separate verification app.

“Who am I to say if [a vaccine card is] real or not? Asked Regina Delfino, who runs the Italian restaurant Mario’s in the Bronx. “Who am I to say you’re not Santa?” She said she would be the one to check the vaccine documentation for people at the door when New York starts enforcing its rules later this month; the other staff at the restaurant doesn’t want to ask. Even without requiring its staff to check the condition of the vaccine for customers, it is now difficult to hire people, she added.

And this highlights another problem that seems likely to arise: Some service employees may not want to apply these new rules and deal with possible customer anger. Then their employers will have to come up with solutions themselves. As Anna North of Vox reported this spring, many restaurants in the United States are struggling to hire enough workers to satisfy customer returns. The reasons for this are different – higher than usual wages for unemployment give workers more leverage in deciding where and when to work; on top of that, low wages and dangerous restaurant conditions often deter workers. Some cities in the cities with the new vaccine mandates told Recode that they should ask existing staff to work extra shifts or even hire discarders to help verify vaccine documents.

“We have the worst staffing crisis in the history of restaurant business in the United States,” Jayaraman of One Fair Wage told Recode. “The idea of ​​adding requirements without raising wages is a disaster waiting to happen.” Proponents of the restaurant say part of the decision involves raising wages and breaking minimum wages, allowing restaurants to pay workers gratuity salary, only $ 2.13 per hour.

Meanwhile, many restaurateurs are still in a double relationship. Ensuring that customers are vaccinated stands to make their work safer, but the need to apply these rules on their own makes their already difficult work difficult. They say the challenge can only get worse with colder weather and eating outdoors is becoming less viable.