United Airlines Workers With Vaccine Exemptions Can Return to Jobs

United Airlines, which was one of the first major businesses to mandate vaccination against the coronavirus, will allow workers who were granted religious or medical exemptions from receiving a shot to return to their jobs at the end of this month.

About 2,200 United employees received exemptions last year. They were placed on unpaid leave or were moved to roles that did not involve in-person contact with customers. Those employees will be able to return to their normal positions on March 28.

“We expect Covid case counts, hospitalizations and deaths to continue to decline nationally over the next few weeks, and, accordingly, we plan to welcome back those employees,” Kirk Limacher, United’s vice president for human resources, said in a note to employees on Thursday.

The airline’s plans were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

United announced its vaccine mandate in early August, one of the first major corporations to do so. By October, nearly all of the airline’s 67,000 employees had been inoculated in one of the largest and most successful corporate vaccination efforts at the time. About 200 employees were later fired for failing to comply with the policy, and all new hires are required to be vaccinated.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/business/united-covid-vaccine.html