General Motors (GM) is requiring its salaried employees to provide their vaccination status to inform the company’s safety protocols for the future.
Prompted by an increase of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., “the company earlier this month implemented an expanded vaccination status reporting process that was mandatory for all U.S. salaried employees,” Maria Raynal, GM spokeswoman, confirmed to The Hill in a statement.
The automotive manufacturer told the Detroit Free Press that hourly workers are encouraged to report their vaccination status as well, but doing so is voluntary.
“The reporting of our employees’ vaccination status is helping GM Medical assess the overall immunity of our employee population and determine when GM should relax or strengthen certain COVID-19 safety protocols as recommended by the CDC and OSHA, such as mask-wearing, physical distancing and facility occupancy rates,” Raynal said.
News of the mandatory vaccine reporting was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Raynal told the Free Press that employees had previously been providing their vaccination status to the company voluntarily, but she explained that the company made the move to require salaried employees to report their vaccination status “to improve our data collection.”
Reuters reported that out of Detroit’s “Big Three” automotive companies, GM is the first to issue such a requirement. However, the Detroit Free Press noted that employees at the three companies have not been required to get the vaccine.
However, that could change given the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent full authorization of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday, which opens the door for businesses and localities to start mandating it to its workers.
Organizations are also banking on the FDA’s fully authorization to help convince some who may have been previously vaccine hesitant to now get inoculated.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 73 percent of Americans aged 18 and up have received at least one dose of the vaccine while nearly 63 percent are fully vaccinated.
Updated Friday at 9:07 a.m.