President Joe Biden receives a briefing on COVID-19 on Friday, July 16, 2021, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
In a speech tonight, Joe Biden is expected to order federal employees to be vaccinated or lose their jobs. Government contractors are also likely to be included in the mandate.
Such an announcement will eliminate the alternative option of regular testing that has so far been afforded to government workers. One friend of the Editors here at Richardcyoung.com has already watched as his mother was fired from her job at a hospital, and now expects his wife will be fired from her job in the government. He says, “They just want control over their own bodies and what goes in them. They’re unsure about this new vaccine. I’m just trying not to cry as I watch my family being extorted by Joe Biden.”
More Mandates Coming
Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki previewed the speech by saying all federal employees will have 75 days to be vaccinated, or be fired. She also noted that even more mandates would be coming. The Daily Mail reports:
President Joe Biden will require all of the roughly 2.1 million federal workers to be vaccinated as part of a series of new mandates he’ll push in a major speech on the COVID pandemic Thursday.
There will be limited exceptions but any federal employee who refuses the shot can be fired, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
Federal employees and contractors will have 75 days to get vaccinated.
The executive order will not include an option of being regularly tested to opt out of the vaccine requirement. The orders will apply to workers in the executive branch but not the congressional or judicial.
‘There will be limited exceptions for legally recognized reasons disability or religious objections,’ Psaki said. Anyone who ‘fails to comply, they will go through the standard HR process, which includes counseling and face disciplinary action,’ she added.
She confirmed that action could include termination of employment.
‘Hopefully it won’t come to that,’ she said.
She said the administration wanted the federal government to serve as an example for other businesses and organizations when it comes to vaccines.
‘Obviously the federal workforce is one of the largest in the country and we would like to be a model to what we think other businesses, organizations should do,’ she noted. ‘The expectation is that if you want to work with federal government or be a contractor, you need to be vaccinated unless you are eligible for one of the exemptions.’
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, said they weren’t consulted on the order.
‘Workers deserve a voice in their working conditions,’ the group said in a statement. ‘Neither of these positions has changed. We expect to bargain over this change prior to implementation, and we urge everyone who is able to get vaccinated as soon as they can do so.’
And the National Federation of Federal Employees, another government workers union, said they didn’t receive advance notice of the executive order.
Psaki dismissed questions about the unions not being consulted. The Biden White House has bragged about its pro-union stance. At a Labor Day event on Wednesday, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said President Biden told him: ‘This is labor’s house.’
‘We have a range of consultation with labor unions, and that has been the case for several weeks and months as we have worked to implement additional steps,’ Psaki said.
‘But our objective here is to continue to save lives.’
The president is putting more pressure on states, businesses and schools to get people vaccinated as the Delta variant causes the case rate to continue to rise in the United States.
But Republican-led states including Texas and Florida have pushed back and are in the process of trying to ban the orders being imposed.
Psaki indicated in interviews on Thursday morning that more mandates were coming.
‘What we’ve seen work over the past couple months are mandates, requirements, making it so workers in the federal government or others have to get vaccinated. We’ve seen it work and we’ve seen it become more popular,’ Psaki said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
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