Status: 07/30/2022 08:38 a.m
The facility-related vaccination requirement is increasingly being questioned. The rule is already being interpreted quite freely – even if not in every federal state.
Lisa Wolf used to be an office management clerk, sat in front of the screen all day and missed contact with other people. Now she works in a nursing home and says she has found her dream job, even if it’s hard: shift work, lack of staff, constant physical work.
She had already secured an apprenticeship as a nursing specialist, but nothing will come of it for the time being. Wolf is not vaccinated and does not intend to be. She is afraid of the side effects of vaccinations. This is her undoing, because the facility-related vaccination requirement prohibits employers from concluding new employment contracts with unvaccinated applicants.
Wolf’s employment contract as a nursing assistant will continue for the time being – however, this job could soon be over. Because your vaccination procedure at the Saarbrücken health department is on the home stretch. Wolf fears that the decisive letter could reach her in August: a ban on entry. A view that makes you helpless: “We colleagues get along really well with each other. And you also grow fond of the residents, somewhere. Then from the familiar environment, having to leave the good working relationship, it’s frustrating.”
Many states are holding back
The facility-related compulsory vaccination is actually the same nationwide – but practice shows that unvaccinated nurses do not have to fear losing their job in all federal states. Only North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and Rhineland-Palatinate have issued entry bans at all. Most other states are holding back. Many point to the great discretionary powers of the health authorities – a barely concealed nod to the authorities to make generous decisions.
The Saarland sees it differently: “It’s a law, no matter what you think about it,” says district council boss Udo Recktenwald from the CDU. “It cannot be that the federal states are outbidding or underbidding.” The “Saarbrücker Zeitung” quotes SPD Health Minister Magnus Jung as saying that it was clear that the country would lose one or the other in nursing. The facility-related vaccination requirement is still correct.
District council head Udo Recktenwald: “It’s a law, no matter what you think about it.”
Image: SR
Debate on compulsory vaccination
This puts Jung entirely in line with Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. He also sticks to his opinion, although there is increasing criticism, most recently from the German Hospital Society. The vaccination helps against serious illnesses, said its CEO Gerald Gass on Wednesday. The actual reason for the obligation to vaccinate – that vaccinated people hardly carry the virus on – has become obsolete with the Omikron variant. For the foreseeable future, the Federal Minister of Health could suspend compulsory vaccination.
However, it is unlikely that anything will happen for the time being. The health authorities in Saarland continue to work on the procedures. A low three-digit number of employees could lose their jobs for the time being.
The fact that Wolf will be one of them is not final, says Beatrice indicator from the Saarland Chamber of Labor: Employers can explain to the health department why the unvaccinated nurses are indispensable – and that is the case if this means that the care of patients or residents collapse. “That’s a horror scenario for the institutions: when a person dies because nobody can stand by to care for them.”
Beatrice indicator from the Saarland Chamber of Labor: “A horror scenario for the facilities: when a person dies because no one can stand by to care for them.”
Image: SR
“thin staffing”
Wolf’s boss will report her unvaccinated employee to the office as essential. “With the thin staffing level, it’s impossible to give away employees. It’s really sad that our politicians reacted like this,” says the director of the home.
For Wolf, classification as indispensable would be the best outcome. Otherwise she would have to go back to her old job, back in front of the screen, at least until the end of December. Then the obligation to vaccinate expires. An extension is not in sight. Then she could start the next attempt to finally become a nurse.