More than 200 General Electric employees recently staged a walkout over the company’s vaccine mandate at the General Electric Greenville plant in South Carolina. GE made the recent announcement to have all staff members comply with the federal mandate by Dec. 8 or face termination. Protesters have argued back that this isn’t about the actual vaccine, but rather about their personal rights and freedom.
General Electric has become one of the latest companies to fight back against President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate, along with IBM, Alphabet Inc, and Facebook. Biden has required all US-based workers to receive the COVID-19 shot by December 8 or be fired. While employees can avoid the shot through approved medical or religious exemptions, some workplaces are refusing to accept them. Other companies, such as Apple and Amazon, have delayed vaccine mandates back to January 2022.
“If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated. If you want to do business with the federal government, vaccinate your workforce,” Biden said during his divisive September coronavirus speech.
Attorney James Lawrence states that the GE staff members are not “anti-vaccine” or “anti-science,” but rather folks who want to have the ability to make a choice as to whether or not they take one of the COVID-19 vaccines. He said this is about holding pro-individual freedom, pro-bodily autonomy position. While the exact number of GE employees protesting the mandate was not clear, the group included older people, as well as children.
While Gov. Henry McMaster initially said he would fight President Biden’s vaccine mandates, he turned around and claimed that the state has “no authority” to stop businesses from mandating them. Workers, however, are standing together and refusing to quit their job over the mandates. They said that the vaxxed and unvaxxed are standing together against government tyranny and keeping the political pressure on state officials.
A spokesperson for GE, on the other hand, maintained that the company will comply with Biden’s mandate requiring all employees of federal contractors to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But critics have argued that there is no mandatory “vaccine” as nothing has been signed into law. They said that the federal government has been flooded with lawsuits over the order and forcing people to take shots in exchange for their employment.
American Airlines employees have also been protesting over the vaccine mandate, as hundreds of people gathered outside the company’s Fort Worth, Texas headquarters, over it. The mandate states that all employees are to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or lose their jobs by Nov. 24. Some workers fear that a vaccination mandate for airline employees will lead to a vaccination mandate for passengers as well, adding that they are leading the way to end the fight because if it doesn’t end with them, then passengers are next.
Protesters can be seen shouting “freedom over force” and “just say no to mandates!” Terry Smith, an American Airlines pilot for over 29 years, said he’s going to have to leave if that’s what it comes down to. He went on to say that he probably won’t apply for exemption, adding that “I don’t think it will be granted.”
There’s no money in natural immunity and that’s why nobody is talking about it or providing studies on it. They don’t even want to test for antibodies in the natural immune and have only pushed the experimental shot. But just like Southwest Airlines, American Airlines will change the tune about mandating vaccines when revenue starts falling and employees are dropping like flies.
