EVERETT, Wash. Oct 15 Reuters: Waving signs like coercion is not consent, and stop the mandate, some 200 Boeing Co employees and others staged a protest on Friday over the planemaker's COVID - 19 vaccine requirement for U.S. workers.
On Tuesday Boeing said it would require its 125,000 federal contractors to be vaccinated by Dec. 8 under an executive order issued by President Joe Biden for the presidents of Homeland Security and the Armed Services Administration (Employees).
Biden and his team struggled to eradicate the coronavirus pandemic because a large slice of the U.S population continues to resist taking safe and widely available vaccines.
It is my choice and it's my body, one avionics engineer said, his voice almost drowned out by anti-Biden chants and trucks honking to show support along the busy street outside Boeing's factory in Everett, north of Seattle.
It's an experimental drug given under a pseudo-emergency, added he added.
Another worker, an assembly mechanic, said: This is America. We don't just do what a person says to us. Earlier this week, Boeing said employees must either show proof of vaccination or have sincerely held religious accommodation based on a disability or a disabled reasonable belief by Dec. 8.
Major U.S. airlines including Spirit Aerosystems have said that they will also meet the deadline imposed on federal contractors, as has aircraft parts manufacturer American Airlines.
Now that he has issued the Executive Order, it is our responsibility to comply with that order, Spirit Chief Executive Officer Tom Gentile wrote in a memo to employees and viewed on Friday by Reuters.
Spirit was calling back former employees as it prepares for what Gentile described as one of the fastest increases in production rates in our industry history. Several Boeing employees who were applying at the protest said they were applying for exemptions. One engineer said he will seek early retirement, rather than complying with the mandate. Another employee, a 20-year Boeing technical designer, said he would find a new job rather than take COVID vaccine and made false claims about the vaccine.
The vaccine is not effective, it isn't safe and it isn't proven, he said.
Boeing has said its mandate does not apply immediately to its sites in Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Monday barring COVID - 19 vaccine mandates by any entity including private employers.
One Boeing mechanic with a shirt with the words practicing socialist distancing - said the mandate reflected tyrannical big-government and tyrannical big business. I'm against the mandate and vaccine is a personal choice, he said.