Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
After months of encouraging employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, companies are beginning to take a harder line and roll out mandates — a dramatic escalation of Corporate America's approach to halting the spread of the virus.
Momentum for vaccine mandates has been building, and President Joe Biden was expected on Thursday to announce a requirement that all federal employees and contractors be vaccinated or be required to submit to regular testing and mitigation requirements. On Wednesday, Google and Facebook became the first two Silicon Valley giants to issue mandates of their own.
Here are the companies that have announced COVID-19 vaccine requirements for at least some of their employees.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to staff Wednesday announcing a vaccine requirement for employees who are coming back to the office. The policy would roll out in the United States in the coming weeks and in other regions in the following months as vaccines become more widely available, Pichai said. It's not clear how Google plans to enforce the policy.
All Facebook employees must get vaccinated before coming back to the office, the company announced Wednesday. "As our offices reopen, we will be requiring anyone coming to work at any of our US campuses to be vaccinated," Lori Goler, Facebook's VP of people said in a statement. "We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves," she added.
Netflix is requiring COVID-19 vaccines for the casts of all its US productions, as well as the people who come in contact with them, according to Deadline. Last week, Hollywood unions and major studios hammered out return-to-work protocols that include "the option to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A" on a production-by-production basis. "Zone A," consists of the actors and the people who come in close proximity to them.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is currently allowing only vaccinated employees to return to the office, a spokesperson for the company said. This decision is a policy adjustment based on employee feedback and an employee survey, the spokesperson said. From September the company will have a "hybrid model," with some vaccinated employees working from the office and others from home, the spokesperson added. The company is planning to share an updated policy for unvaccinated employees later in the summer.
Morgan Stanley's New York office is banning all unvaccinated staff and clients from entering its headquarters. All employees who work in buildings with a "large employee presence" were required to confirm their vaccination status by July 1, according to a company memo to employees.
Luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue is requiring that all employees be vaccinated, the the New York Times reported. "We need to be much more office-based," and "the default needs to be our office," CEO Marc Metrick told the Times.
All new hires and current employees of the Washington Post will be required to demonstrate proof of full COVID-19 vaccinations, the company's publisher and CEO Fred Ryan said in a memo to employees Tuesday. Ryan stated that the requirement is a "condition of employment" beginning with the publication's return to the office on September 13.
Ascension Health announced that it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for all of its employees "for the safety of patients and visitors, our associates, our families and loved ones, and the community," according to a Tuesday press release from the company. "Ascension will require that all associates be vaccinated against COVID-19, whether or not they provide direct patient care, and whether they work in our sites of care or remotely," the company said in the statement.
As of August 2, all employees working in Lyft's offices are required to be vaccinated, according to an email Lyft CEO Logan Green sent to staffers that was viewed by CNN Business. In addition, the majority of the company's offices in the United States will now return to the office on February 2, 2022, according to the email, a six-month extension from the company's original return-to-office date. Lyft informed team members several weeks ago that they will be required to submit proof of vaccination in order to return to the office, a spokesperson told CNN Business.
Twitter was already requiring employees who returned to the office to show proof of vaccination, but the company on Wednesday took the additional step of closing its offices in New York and San Francisco completely and pause further office reopenings.
The company took the call "after careful consideration of the CDC's updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions," a spokesperson told CNN Business. "We're continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritize the health and safety of our Tweeps."
-- Rishi Iyengar contributed to this report.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.