WASHINGTON Reuters -- U.S. passenger railroad Amtrak said on Tuesday it will temporarily suspend a vaccine mandate for employees and no longer expects to cut some service in January.
Bill Flynn, a memo seen by Amtrak Chief Executive, said the railroad would allow employees who were not vaccinated to get tested.
Currently, fewer than 500 active Amtrak employees are not in compliance. The railroad told Congress last week it anticipated proactively needing to reduce some train frequencies across our network because of the mandate.
Flynn said 95.7% of Amtrak's 17,000 employees are fully vaccinated or have an accommodation - and including employees with one dose 97.3% of employees are in compliance.
Amtrak was cited by a U.S. district court decision that halted the enforcement of President Joe Biden's executive order mandating vaccines for federal contractors by January.
The memo said that the company had to reevaluate its policy and address the uncertainty surrounding the federal requirements that apply to Amtrak.
The employees that must submit testing and fail to do so will be placed on an unpaid leave of absence, according to Amtrak. During a House committee hearing last week, lawmakers questioned Amtrak officials over planned service cuts.
Representative Sam Graves, a Republican, said Tuesday that the Biden administration's vaccine mandate would have delivered less service for the taxpayers who are footing the bill and criticized the planned cuts. Amtrak President Stephen Gardner told a House panel last week that the plan was to fully restore all frequencies by March or as soon as we have qualified employees available. Amtrak is currently working to add 2,500 to 3,500 new employees by late 2022.
The infrastructure bill has been passed by Congress, and Amtrak has received $22 billion and $36 billion in grants as part of a massive infrastructure bill.
Gardner said that Amtrak saw demand fall off significantly during COVID 19 and is now seeing about 70% of pre-pandemic volumes.