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 Some lawyers previously interpreted President Joe Biden's Sept. 9
executive order and subsequent White House guidance requiring all
covered federal contractor employees to be vaccinated by Dec. 8
unless they got a religious or medical exemption.
The White House comments suggest federal contractors employing
millions of U.S. workers have significant flexibility in enforcing
COVID-19 rules and will not be required to immediate lay-off
workers, but will have time for education, counseling and other
measures before potentially ending employment.
Jeff Zients said he expects federal agencies and contractors "will
follow their standard HR processes and that for any of the probably
relatively small percent of employees that are not in compliance
they'll go through education, counseling, accommodations and then
enforcement."
Zients said he does not expect any disruptions to the U.S. economy
as a result of the mandate.
"We’re creating flexibility within the system … There is not a cliff
here," Zients said, emphasizing the goal is to get people vaccinated
"not to punish them so we do not expect any disruptions."
He added: "These processes play out across weeks not days."
His comments were more explicit than those
https://www.reuters.com/business/
aerospace-defense/us-airlines-white-house-say-vaccine-mandate-will-not-impact-holiday-travel-2021-10-21
last week.
Zients also said a new emergency measure will soon be finalized to
ensure private sector workers at companies with 100 or more
employees are fully vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 at least
weekly.
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines said last Thursday they did
not think the Dec. 8 deadline would impact holiday travel or result
in employees leaving.
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 Some airlines and
industry-watchers initially feared an exodus of
unvaccinated airline or government employees
involved in travel just before the Christmas
season.
Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Gary Kelly
said last week: "We want our employees to know
that nobody is going to lose their job on
December 9 if we're not perfectly in
compliance... "We're not going to fire anybody
who doesn't get vaccinated."
American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker
said last week he did not expect any employees
to leave as a result of the vaccine mandate.
A group representing FedEx Corp, United Parcel
Service Inc and other cargo carriers told the
White House last week it would be virtually
impossible to have 100% of their respective work
forces vaccinated by Dec. 8.
Many federal contractors have told employees
that they risk losing their jobs if they are not
vaccinated by Dec. 8. Raytheon Technologies' (RTX.N)
Chief Executive Greg Hayes warned in a CNBC
interview Tuesday the U.S. aerospace and defense
firm will lose 'several thousand' employees who
refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines, as it prepares
to meet the Dec. 8 deadline.
Republican Senator Roger Wicker on Wednesday
urged Biden to abandon the plan, saying "we
cannot afford to gut our transportation network
of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of
essential, good-paying jobs."
(Reporting by David Shepardson; additional
reporting by Tom Hals and Nandita BoseEditing by
Alistair Bell and Diane Craft)
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