Max Zhan joins Brian Sozzi, Julie Hyman, and Brian Cheung to break down the union perspective for vaccinations as unions struggle to thread the needle of supporting a safe work environment and getting vaccinated as fatigue in patience continues to wane on the Biden Administration.

Video Transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: Well, let's get to that major headline. President Joe Biden ordering all companies with more than 100 employees to either enforce a vaccine mandate or conduct weekly testing. For more on this, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Max Zahn, who has been watching these developments. And Max, I guess the first natural question is, will this actually end up in more workers at these companies getting vaccinated?

MAX ZAHN: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's yet to be seen. So the Biden administration anticipates that that rule that you mentioned about vaccination for companies with 100 or more employees affecting around 80 million American workers. On top of that, we see an outright vaccine mandate for health care workers that work at facilities that receive funding through Medicare and Medicaid. So right around roughly 100 million American workers will face some form of a vaccine mandate as a result of this.

And frankly, it comes at a time where we have seen some companies moving in this direction, whether it's a company like Goldman Sachs or Chevron imposing some form of vaccine mandate. And some of the reporting I've done has looked at the way that unions have responded as these companies have imposed these vaccine mandates. And it speaks to the worker perspective and to that question of whether, ultimately, workers will comply and this will help the Biden administration get a greater vaccination rate in this country. And unions are really of two minds.

On the one hand, they want a safe workplace as much as anybody. On the other hand, they have this sizable portion of their membership that is reluctant to get the vaccines. And the way that it's fallen out is they've said, we'll accept-- we'll even support a vaccine mandate, but we want to bargain over how it's implemented, things like exemptions, incentives, penalties. We want to have a say in what that looks like. So of late, we've seen, for instance, Tyson Foods agree to a deal with union representatives that offers 120,000 employees 20 extra hours of paid time off to comply with a new vaccine mandate. We saw Disney World offer 43,000 employees the right to an exemption if they have medical conditions or relevant religious beliefs going along with their vaccine mandate.

So what we're likely to see, I think, from companies put in a position where now they need to comply with this vaccine mandate from the Biden administration is doing whatever they can to make their workers comfortable, who likely are-- some of whom are reluctant to get the vaccine-- feel good about staying with the company and going forward and complying with this.

JULIE HYMAN: And Max, that brings up an interesting question as you talk to union representatives and leaders. You know, it's one thing for them to be negotiating and trying to get these-- what they see as more favorable terms of enactment. What are they hearing from their constituents about their concerns over getting vaccinated? Are the unions themselves trying to offer creative incentives to people to get vaccinated? How is all that playing out?

MAX ZAHN: I think unions, across the board, are facing really different membership on this question. I think some unions-- for instance, you look at teachers' unions, whether it's the American Federation of Teachers, whether it's the National Education Association, which combined have 5 million members-- they really have largely vaccine-friendly membership and haven't faced a ton of that opposition from their membership. So what they've been focused on, really, is that question of exemptions, just making sure that workers-- for instance, I talked to the AFT president, who told me that workers who are near the end of a pregnancy term and are concerned about the effects of the vaccine on that pregnancy just want a delay in when they get the vaccine to ensure that that pregnancy comes to term safely, and then they're happy to go along with a vaccine mandate.

So some of those really tricky specific medical concerns are what's happening in some of those unions that have vaccine-friendly membership. But you see other unions across the board, including some that have outright opposition that they faced among their membership, where they've really had to just negotiate around, as you mentioned, incentives, things to make people not really any more willing to get the vaccine than they felt, but at least an acknowledgment from their employer that this is something that they're struggling with. And they'll give them something like extra paid time off or even a small stipend around getting that vaccine. So there's differences across the board depending on membership. But unions are put in a position as this mediator between the employer and the worker to figure out how to thread that needle to make workers comfortable.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, it's definitely a tricky one to do. Max, thank you so much. And to be clear, for now, the science does not suggest that there's any danger to pregnant women in getting the vaccine. But understandably, some people still concerned about something like that.