Most U.S. professional employees don’t have contracts - at least nothing that protects them (they may sign things like a non-compete).
Unions, you might have an issue - but most unions in the U.S. have been pretty much broken by corporate interests. And there is certainly nothing about Covid vaccines or EUA vaccines in contracts.
Nurses, who are often union employees, have been required to get vaccinated for a long time. And recent court cases have held up requiring them to get the EUA Covid vaccine or lose their jobs.
The NFL situation happening right now is interesting and worth a look on requiring vaccines. NFL players have pretty good contracts and a lot of leverage. They aren’t requiring vaccines as a league - but the penalties a team will face if they have any positive covid cases among unvaccinated players is stiff. That moves the requirement onto the team owners - and the risk they take for not requiring it is really high.
I know of the hospital staff firings that were upheld in Houston but I didn’t look deep into the courts reasoning. I would suspect that their union had a “fired for good cause” clause and the nature of their work would affect how “good” the reason was. I think a unionized garbage man might be on safer ground than someone working on sick people.
Again, up there in Canada, you have more protection for workers. In the US, I can literally fire my entire team for having nicer cars than me and no court would lift a finger to protect them. You can make the argument that that is shitty, but this isn’t really the forum or thread for an “at will” discussion and it’s not like we don’t have plenty of them that you could wake up if you want.
I suspect not. In a contract, it isn’t going to be specified that vaccine status is a protected. Therefore, it isn’t and the garbage worker could be fired. (And most waste management workers aren’t unionized, so aren’t operating under any sort of contract)
I don’t think she would be, its hard to find garbage workers and there isn’t a huge reason to require the vaccine (there is in health - and I would argue education), waste management companies aren’t going to want the hassle of having to find staff over it. But that doesn’t mean that if one does, the employees will have any success keeping their jobs.
Oh, and its possible that the nurses in Houston had no contract at all. Only about 17% of U.S. nurses are covered by a union. The rest are not operating under any contract.