An Arizona lawmaker is asking the CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for a meeting to discuss the company’s national COVID-19 vaccination mandate which could result in several Arizona healthcare workers losing their jobs in a few weeks.
Rep. Shawnna Bolick wrote to Dr. Richard Gray on Monday after hearing from dozens of the company’s Arizona employees about the threats of termination as well as costly testing requirements for those granted vaccination exemptions.
“I know it has been difficult to navigate the health care system during the pandemic, but more than 8,000 staff members from Mayo would like their concerns to be heard,” Bolick (R-LD20) told Gray. The Mayo Clinic has roughly 63,000 global employees; Gray oversees about 9,000 of those.
In the past two weeks, employees and supporters have protested outside Mayo Clinic facilities across the country, including one of the company’s flagship medical centers in Scottsdale. They are upset with the mandate requiring staff members to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 3 unless approved for a medical or religious exemption.
Estimates place the number of unvaccinated Mayo Clinic employees in the United States at roughly 8,000. Noncompliance by those without an exemption will lead to a one-month unpaid leave starting Dec. 3. Termination will then take effect Jan. 3, according to a Mayo Clinic policy.
Yet Bolick pointed out to Gray that even staffers with medical or religious exemptions will suffer an undue hardship because they will be forced to undergo “testing” at the employees’ expense.
“It is worth noting the Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Disease Control don’t recommend asymptomatic testing due to the high level of false positive readings,” Bolick wrote. “Many of your employees had previous COVID infections. Why doesn’t this excuse them from the vaccine requirement?”
Bolick’s letter also touched on the many active lawsuits filed to challenge employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Which is why the Mayo Clinic should reconsider its policy before anyone loses their jobs, she wrote.
There is also the issue of the growing shortage of qualified healthcare workers across Arizona, which Bolick told Gray “will be severely aggravated” if the company does not put a hold on its vaccination mandate.
“Your employees don’t want to have to choose between their right to earn a living and their medical freedom,” Bolick adding, reminding Gray that Arizona “is a right-to-work state, not an authoritarian despot.”
She closed with a request to meet with Gray to discuss the future of the Mayo Clinic’s COVID-19 employee vaccination program.
The Mayo Clinic mandate was announced in October following an internal campaign over the summer which sought to convince employees to voluntarily take the vaccine. That effort resulted in less than a 90 percent vaccination rate.
Jim McVeigh, a Mayo Clinic spokesman, publicly acknowledged last month that the number of unvaccinated employees drove company officials to adopt the mandatory policy.
Bolick, who serves as chair of the House Ways & Means Committee and vice-chair of the Criminal Justice Reform Committee, has been outspoken about the federal government’s use of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to force Arizonans into compliance with other mandate.
Now, she says, the White House is weaponizing OSHA with an emergency rule requiring employers with more than 100 employees to implement a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy.
“It is time to enforce the 10th Amendment,” Bolick says of the 1791 ratified amendment which succinctly reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”
She is also concerned about how the threat of termination is impacting Arizonans.
“Our healthcare heroes should not have to decide between their right to earn a living versus their medical freedom,” Bolick said Monday.