This is an opinion column.
Alabama’s state government shouldn’t ban businesses from requiring their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. It’s short-sighted government overreach focused more on scoring political points than upholding limited-government principles. Yet that’s precisely the measure some legislators want Gov. Kay Ivey to call for in the upcoming special session. Conservatives highly skeptical of government mandates placed on individuals ought to be consistent when it comes to business.
“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that,” President Barack Obama said in 2012. “Somebody else made that happen.” Republicans would do well to remember the outrage that ensued from that statement. Yes, education, infrastructure, and other government policies contribute to business success, but they don’t make it. At the time, conservatives realized and respected the critical role individuals play in starting, owning, and operating businesses.
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We’re rightly bristling at President Joe Biden forcing a federal vaccine mandate on private employers without clear statutory authority. We’re seriously inconsistent if we don’t apply that same skepticism to state action which forcibly removes health and safety decisions about the workplace from the employers who run them.
If an employer wants to condition employment on a vaccine, uniform, code of conduct, or social media policy, we should let them. Government didn’t build that business; it shouldn’t try to run it. Demanding that the government “protect” employees from employers concerned about the health of other employees and customers should be principally offensive for conservatives.
A government mandate remains a government mandate even if our political preferences happen to align with its outcome. Everyone believes their expansion of government is righteous and won’t be abused. Man, have I got a Patriot Act for the folks who think that.
The unintended consequences of expanding government are ever present. The abuses of the Patriot Act are only one example. Charitable bingo-based slot machines in Alabama are the weird result of regulation. The federal government expanded unemployment provisions during the pandemic, and workers were reluctant to come back into the workforce. If politicians were good at seeing the ultimate results of the laws they enact, they’d work in insurance instead.
Liberty matters in business activity as much as it does to individuals because economic liberty and individual freedom are inextricably linked.
If an employer chooses to require vaccines, he or she faces powerful market realities. Employers are presently experiencing a labor crunch. Good employees who don’t want a vaccine have plenty of options. Let the market sort that out.
That’s why so many large employers are crying alligator tears over the federal government forcing them to mandate the COVID-19 vaccines. If every competitor in a market is forced into the same behavior, nobody has a competitive advantage. Vaccine mandate bans serve the same purpose in the opposite direction. Large businesses push for one. Politicians push for the other. The lion’s share of small business owners don’t have much of a say.
In most cases, employers should make decisions about workplace health and safety and the labor market should reward or punish them accordingly. It takes the choice out of the hands of politicians and puts it in the control of employers and employees. That’s where it should be.
Yes, the government does have a role in prohibiting certain workplace hazards (think asbestos), but the COVID-19 vaccine simply doesn’t pose the type of harm the government typically regulates.
Alabama has already enacted a COVID-19 liability shield for employers to avoid a trial lawyer field day where every employer response to the pandemic would have been litigated into eternity. If legislators wanted to condition those protections on the state government having more say about workplace health and safety, they should have made it clear when they enacted the law.
A private sector vaccine mandate ban is nothing more than a politician substituting his judgment for a business owner’s. We should protect people’s right not to be vaccinated, but they shouldn’t be immune from the consequences of that decision. Employers have liberties as well when it comes to protecting employees and customers. Ivey would do well to focus the upcoming special session of the Alabama legislature on redistricting and not some reactionary government mandate.
Smith is a recovering political attorney with three boys, two dogs, and an extremely patient wife. He engages media, business, and policy through the Triptych Foundation and Triptych Media. Please direct outrage or agreement to csmith@al.com or @DCameronSmith on Twitter.