On Thursday, Raytheon employees rallied outside the company’s Tucson headquarters in opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate issued by the Biden administration. The mandate requires companies like Raytheon, a defense contractor, to require their employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
The company moved the date from December 31st to December 8th for all employees to receive the vaccine or obtain an approved exemption or religious accommodation or risk being fired.
“This is a rally,” said Tracy, a Raytheon employee. “This is a rally in the name of love and in good spirit and good cheer. It is not a strike, and we are not trying to harm our company. We want our company to succeed but you know it seems that we have gone off the rails a little bit as far as peoples’ individual choices go. So, I like working at Raytheon. You know, I love Raytheon and I just I wanted my company to come back to where it was.”
Tracy thanked Arizona legislators for passing a law sponsored by Sen. Nancy Barto, A.R.S. 23-206, which reads:
If an employer receives notice from an employee that the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, practices or observances prevent the employee from taking the COVID-19 vaccination, the employer shall provide a reasonable accommodation unless the accommodation would pose an undue hardship and more than a de minimus cost to the operation of the employer’s business.
The employees are filing a lawsuit in their effort to fight the mandate. They have set up a website at vaxmandateinfo.com. On the website, they are inviting other employees across Arizona “to band together in opposition of the mandates and to support legislation that would end the need for exemptions statewide for all private employees.”
“We envision a day when all Arizona employees are free from forced medical procedures,” the group notes on their website.
Raytheon has approximately 13,000 employees at its Tucson headquarters. With its highly skilled and highly educated workforce, it is likely that the company is receiving considerable pushback from its workforce.
Researchers found that it is the highly educated who are not only the most skeptical about getting vaccinated but are also the least likely to change their minds about it.
Raytheon employees are not alone in their opposition to the mandate. Arizona hospitals are losing staff in record numbers due to the mandate.
The hospitals have given their employees until November 1 to get the COVID-19 vaccine or, as in the case of Raytheon employees, risk being fired.
Since last Friday, air travel has nearly ground to a halt due to opposition to the vaccine mandate.
Sen. Barto was joined by fellow Senators Kelly Townsend and Sonny Borelli is declaring support for the airline employees.
On Thursday, President Biden said that his private-sector COVID-19 vaccine mandate will take effect “soon” to address what he said was the “unacceptably high number” of people who don’t want to be vaccinated.
“The Labor Department is going to soon be issuing an emergency rule for companies with 100 or more employees to implement vaccination requirements,” Biden said.
“Nothing better exemplifies the blurring line between large corporations and the government then a government contractor working hand in hand with the federal government to impose vaccine mandates on unwilling Americans,” said attorney Alexander Kolodin, who is representing a Phoenix Union High School teacher suing to stop the mandates.