Agreed. Companies are in it to make money. No argument about that.The vast majority of companies are in business for one reason, to make money. Company policies and rules are in place in place to protect the company, not the employee.
If they think following some vaccine "mandate" is in their best interests of protecting their bottom line, that is exactly what they are going to do.
I fear that the only solid solution to end this nightmare, are people being fired, walking off their jobs, and filing lawsuits in defiance of getting the vaccine.
However, one needs to wonder how much foresight they have and whether they realize that they will pay in the long run by losing valuable employees, having to hire newbs, having to train them etc. In the meantime, they won't be producing at full capacity and will suffer financial losses.
While I do not have any concrete numerical data, common sense dictates that the financial fallout won't be negligible. Take SWA or ATC as two blatantly obvious examples.
You are right that this mandate comes from above and the companies must comply. While some would say that there is no other option, it just means that they have not thought of other possibilities. With religious and medical exemptions, smart company leaders could offer a simple exemption form that an employee could just sign and continue their employment. Everybody wins.
However, I believe that you might be onto something here where we really will need to see hard pushback and hard times of people losing jobs, filing lawsuits and possibly pushing the SCOTUS to actually rule in favor of our constitution.