WaPo: (freebie)
A federal court has ruled that United Airlines can put employees who are unvaccinated against the coronavirus on unpaid leave, even if the workers had received medical or religious exemptions from the company, according to Leslie Scott, a spokeswoman for the carrier.
The Monday ruling allows the airline to proceed with enforcing the mandate, which doesn’t allow unvaccinated employees to submit to regular testing in lieu of getting vaccinated. About 2,000 workers have received medical or religious exemptions, Scott said. They will be offered non-customer-facing roles, and those who don’t accept will be put on leave, she said.
U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman of the federal court in Fort Worth rejected claims that the strict mandate had put workers in an “impossible position” by forcing them to choose between a vaccine or unpaid leave, according to Reuters. He said human resources policies are up to the company.
As a federal contractor and an employer with more than 100 workers, United faces a federal deadline of Jan. 4 to vaccinate its workforce. The company has said that 99.7 percent of its workers have been vaccinated, when excluding those who sought exemptions, earning it praise from President Biden.
The airline industry’s employee vaccine policies have been closely watched during the pandemic. Several other major carriers announced staff vaccine requirements on the heels of Biden’s mandates.
Analysis: GOP often ignores testing option in Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate.
Here’s why:
Politics is a business that rewards simplicity — and often deliberate and vast oversimplification. That’s on full display now on the right.
Investigating threats against school board members is cast as labeling parents who would dare to complain as “terrorists.” “Critical race theory” has become a catchall for virtually any academic discussion of the impacts of racism. Potential federal settlements with families separated at the border is described as though it’s handing out money to undocumented immigrants willy-nilly, rather than people (often those using the legal asylum process) who had their children taken from them.
But another much more consequential debate continues to exemplify the dumbing-down of our collective political discourse: President Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers.
Last week, 41 Republican senators issued a lengthy news release signaling they would formally oppose the rule, which Biden officially announced Thursday and which a federal judge later suspended. The release ran more than 2,600 words and included quotes from 28 of the senators. Only in two of the quotes and some background at the end was the weekly testing option even acknowledged. Much of it suggested the choice was a binary one between vaccination and termination for everyone involved.
Politics is a business that rewards simplicity — and often deliberate and vast oversimplification. That’s on full display now on the right.
Investigating threats against school board members is cast as labeling parents who would dare to complain as “terrorists.” “Critical race theory” has become a catchall for virtually any academic discussion of the impacts of racism. Potential federal settlements with families separated at the border is described as though it’s handing out money to undocumented immigrants willy-nilly, rather than people (often those using the legal asylum process) who had their children taken from them.
But another much more consequential debate continues to exemplify the dumbing-down of our collective political discourse: President Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers.
Last week, 41 Republican senators issued a lengthy news release signaling they would formally oppose the rule, which Biden officially announced Thursday and which a federal judge later suspended. The release ran more than 2,600 words and included quotes from 28 of the senators. Only in two of the quotes and some background at the end was the weekly testing option even acknowledged. Much of it suggested the choice was a binary one between vaccination and termination for everyone involved.
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