German court rules flutist can be fired for refusing Covid test
NewsA landmark ruling today by the Federal Labour Court has upheld a decision by Bavarian State Opera to dismiss a female flute player who refused to take a mandatory Covid test.
The court found that the imposition of mandatory testing was lawful and the musician had acted unreasonably in refusing.
Details are still coming through.
Yet another confirmation that German courts are hopelessly corrupt: https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1527214619370070016
Curious if anybody knows of US orchestras that have fired musicians for failure to get a vaccine or booster? And if so are those terminations being fought in court?
I think something like that happened in the Baltimore Symphony.
My question to her: Was it all worth it?
If you have to even ask her that question, then it is evident that her answer would be lost on you.
It may come as a shock to you, but some people in the arts value their right to bodily autonomy over a title, tiara and a paycheck.
For those who do not, there may be a steep price to pay in the future.
In the meantime, get ready to roll-up your sleeves in the name of monkey pox.
Taking a test ” carries a big price for the future” ?
She’s a flautist—blows air for a living. The health safety of the second violinists and the colleagues in her section overrides her being ‘triggered’ by a simple nose swab.
With such a mindset about the welfare of her colleagues, it’s hard to imagine anything beautiful could be sounded out of her flute.
I wish her well in her ‘safe space’, …formerly used for …practicing.
Gerry Feinsteen is it worth standing by your convictions to protect freedom? To protect your health? To protect your inalienable rights? She showed courage.
In the US there are hundreds of musicians declining vaccines and/or fraudulent PCR testing who have been banned from performing with their orchestras. Some have been denied their lawfully permitted religious and medical exemptions and have been placed on one-year, unpaid leaves of absences instead. And now that this concert season is coming to a close, their employers are threatening to fire some of them.
There is currently a lawsuit against Artis-Naples, in Florida, being handled by Liberty Counsel. There are a few articles online about this. Here is one:
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/local/2022/06/02/artis-naples-vaccine-mandate-musicians-could-lead-lawsuit-liberty-counsel/9975612002/
Such acts of coercion have been identified by David E. Martin as domestic terrorism. Coercion was made illegal by the Nuremberg Codes in the tribunals post-WWII.
Thank you for this post.
A colleague of mine, a fantastic musician of tremendous talent, left behind the totalitarian regime of their home country to come to the U.S. to start over. This person did not want to take the “vaccine”(even remarking that the governance in the U.S. was starting bear a distressing resemblance to the country they left behind), but felt like they had no choice.
This person died a short time after of myocarditis and the family is convinced that it is was a result of the receiving this shot.
To the person above who is trying to equate “taking the test” to carrying “a big price in the future,” please tell me that you are being facetious and you are not actually this obtuse in reality. The “right to bodily autonomy” includes the right of refusal to participate in medical experimentation, whether it entails incessant swabbing and inherently flawed PCR testing, serial injections with an experimental, unapproved biological agent(do you know what the contents of these shots are?), or the demand that one’s health information is kept private from an increasingly intrusive medical-governmental apparatus.
Is a flutist a flautist with a flu?
“Is a flutist a flautist with a flu?” No, she’s a flautist without a flaute.
The flutist’s refusal was the prelude to the afternoon of a flu.
Nazism is ( unfortunately ) still alive ( I was refused at a cafe because my negative test had expired 15 minutes earlier…)
Is that the same nazism that you are fighting in Ukraine? What constitutes an expired negative test, was it made by a putin company?
Authoritarianism ≠ Nazism. Misuse cheapens the meaning as well as the user.
Munich is hopelessly corrupt. Not surprising. I wasted the best years of my life there. Denazification of the ‘Capitol City Of The Movement’ was mostly cosmetic in nature.
I observed that as well.
I doubt courts can impose vaccines, but testing against a pandemic disease before admitting someone to a closed society like an orchestra, especially when her instrument is liable to aid spread of airborne elements of said disease, is nothing other than essential. The result is, she has it ir she doesn’t. If she does, get her to bed. If she doesn’t, what’s the problem?
This is the sort of extreme right wing reaction that American gun owners present to background testing before purchase of weapons — which in their benighted country includes the acquisition, as early as the age of 18, or assault weapons.
The NRA maintains that, in the face of tragedies like Uvalde last week, the people should not blame THEIR law-abiding membership — it is all “criminals.” But they resist the most cursory background checks in a country where you can order guns online or buy them at a weekend show — checks meant only to ascertain criminal records and mental health problems. If they are all so law-abiding and stable, what are they afraid of?
The US Supreme Court has ruled last year that these Covid-19 shots are not actually vaccines and consequently concluded the “vaccines” should be stopped. Why? Because the virus these “vaccines” is meant to address has never been isolated. This means no one anywhere in the world has demonstrated Covid-19 exists as a virus. Not even the CDC has a sample of this so-called virus.
That should make us all stop and think.
@Thierrence Nye. Your first paragraph is 100% factually untrue. It is shameful that such misinformation is still being disseminated.
Here is a detail description in German:
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/urteil-vom-bundesarbeitsgericht-arbeitgeber-darf-von-mitarbeitern-corona-tests-fordern/28392580.html
Correct decision.
Didn’t seem to bother Bojo with partytime.
Lose your job for a massive media hyped con-game.
She should get a medal!
Where is my right to bodily integrity affected if all I have to do is have a cotton swab shoved up my nose?
Isn’t it much more serious that in the event of an infection I could infect all my colleagues sitting in the orchestra pit with me? And at the time the PCR tests were ordered, Corona was indeed still a disease to be afraid of.
Here, an overprivileged (yes, the Bavarian State Opera pays fantastically) musician has proven that she is capable of selfish action and is not even afraid of a lawsuit despite the stupidity of her action.
You might be surprised how easily your “bodily integrity” is compromised if, as you say, a “cotton swab” is “shoved” into your mucous membrane.
By the way, if I understand it correctly, Ms. I. was not dismissed, but has since voluntarily renounced continuing to play in this orchestra and collecting 8,351.86 euros every month.
It’s great to stand up for your principles!
To quote from the “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, Article 4”:
“La liberté consiste à pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas à autrui: ainsi l’exercice des droits naturels de chaque homme n’a de bornes que celles qui assurent aux autres membres de la société la jouissance de ces mêmes droits. Ces bornes ne peuvent être déterminées que par la loi.”
Or:
“Freedom consists in being able to do anything that does not harm another.”
The pandemic will go down in history as the only disease so dangerous that you must be tested in order to know that you have it. Looking back, aren’t most of you all a bit embarrassed about how you over-reacted? Covid-19 was only dangerous if you were unhealthy going into 2020. Disease is part of life: if you’re worried about getting sick, then get in shape and leave the rest of us alone. Society shut down on account of millions of fearful people who realised their immune system wasn’t up to snuff. Some brave people tried to stand up to the insanity, however the pharmaceutical companies and medical industry wasn’t going to let an opportunity like this pass without making a buck.
Your lack of expertise in immunology and public health speaks volumes. Had you lost a loved one you might have reacted without a sense of embarrassment. The notion that only people with comorbidities died from COVID-19 is a fantasy pushed by the disinformation crowd. How many millions of people need to die and how many more have to live with debilitating long COVID for you to move on to the your next bs disinformation campaign?
Bravo. Well said.
I think 15 million dead would gladly have been “embarrassed” at over-reacting rather than succumb to Covid.
Consider yourself very lucky, if not more than a little ignorant.
Asian countries have managed far better than the West because they understand two things many Westerners don’t:
1) One can have Covid-19 with no symptoms (asymptomatic case), but can still transmit the virus to another person to whom the virus leads to death.
A simple example: Little Billy goes to kindergarten, happy and healthy, and catches the virus from Little Mike. Both are so young, they don’t know they are infected. A day or so later, Little Billy returns home from
school and his grandparents come over for dinner. Infected, but asymptomatic, Little Billy passed Covid to both of his grandparents.
There you go. Perhaps the most common example of how the virus spread.
2) Asians didn’t protest wearing surgical masks because they had experienced SARS in 2003.
Westerners focus on the mask ‘not’ protection against Covid, but that is not the point in Asia. In Asia the mask protects other people from each other because, see example above, people carry Covid and spread it unknowingly. How it effects each individual depends on each individual, not the person from whom the virus was transmitted.
A cloth mask is not very useful, and it is important to understand mask hygiene, etc. Asians have been well aware since 2003.
Some of these comments bemuse me. I regularly give myself a covid test before going into a crowded space. Takes 5 minutes then you wait half hour for result. Just give a swab. Why on earth anyone makes a fuss about this and cries of ‘Nazism’ is quite beyond me!
Why on earth you ask? Ignorance, laziness, and lack of concern for others.