Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian says he is doing away with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate due to the “divisiveness” of the issue and also because the company has already achieved a high percentage of employees vaccinated.
Bastian said that announcing a plan to get all of their airline’s workers vaccinated has been effective thus far without having to enforce a mandate, which has led to a 90 percent vaccination rate.
Bastian said announcing a plan to get all employees vaccinated, without enforcing a mandate, has worked, allowing the company to reach a 90% vaccination rate.
“The reason the mandate was put in by [the] president, I believe, was because they wanted to make sure companies had a plan to get their employees vaccinated,” the CEO said, per Fox Business. “A month before the president came out with the mandate, we had already announced our plan to get all of our people vaccinated. And the good news is the plan is working.”
Bastian also “acknowledged that there will need to be religious and medical accommodations made for those who wish to remain unvaccinated while avoiding having to threaten employment status,” according to Fox Business Network.
“By the time we’re done, we’ll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate,” the CEO noted.
Fox Business noted further:
Bastian acknowledged that there will need to be religious and medical accommodations made for those who wish to remain unvaccinated while avoiding having to threaten employment status.
Despite a “very choppy” coronavirus recovery for the air travel industry, Bastian celebrated Delta’s low cancelation rate and overall operational balance. The CEO shared that the company has recorded 116 “perfect days” this year without cancelations which is right on par with pre-pandemic 2019 numbers.
“By the time we’re done, we’ll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate,” he said. “We’re proving that you can work collaboratively with your people, trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs.”
He went on to praise his employees who he said are ensuring that operations run smoothly.
“Delta’s done a great job all year long with making certain that we’re managing supply and demand in equilibrium,” he said. “Our people are doing a great job.
“I can’t give enough thanks to the Delta team, providing a great product for our customers and it’s one of the reasons we were profitable this quarter,” he added.
Bastian’s announcement that he will get rid of the vaccine mandate comes as President Biden announced earlier this week that the Labor Department will be issuing a rule forcing companies with 100 or more employees to mandate their workers get the COVID jab.
In a nearly six-minute address, Biden said that “we’re making progress. Nationally, daily cases are down 47 percent and hospitalizations are down 38 percent over the past six weeks.”
However,he warned that “we’re in a very critical period as we work to turn the corner on COVID-19” and that “we have to do more to vaccinate 66 million unvaccinated people in America.”
“We’re down to 66 million — it’s still an unacceptably high number — of unvaccinated people from almost 100 million in July. “That’s important. It’s important progress. But it’s not — now is not the time to let up. We have a lot more to do. We’re in a very critical period as we work to turn the corner on COVID-19,” he added.
“First, we have to do more to vaccinate the 66 million unvaccinated people in America. It’s essential. The vaccine requirements that we started rolling out in the summer are working. They’re working,” said the president.
As such: “The Labor Department is going to soon be issuing an emergency rule for companies with 100 or more employees to implement vaccination requirements in their — among their workforce.”