United Airlines is now allowing all employees who were exempt from getting the vaccine to return to work.
More than 2,000 United employees were granted religious or medical exemptions last year. As a result, they were placed on unpaid leave or moved to positions that would not involve in-person contact with customers. These employees will now be allowed to return to their previous positions by the end of March.
“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,” said Kirk Limacher, vice president for human resources at United.
In August 2021, United announced that it would require all U.S.-based employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, or they would be laid off. Around two hundred employees lost their jobs because they did not get vaccinated or seek an exemption.
United Airlines was sued for the exemption practice by a handful of employees, who claimed the airline’s offer of unpaid leave was not reasonable enough for workers who secured official exemptions from the mandate.
A judge initially denied the employees’ request to block the unpaid leave practice. However, after a long battle through multiple courts, a federal appeals court ruled in February that the lower court judge had to reconsider his decision in the case.
United requested that the ruling be dismissed as irrelevant altogether because the airline was changing its exemption policy, but the employees’ attorney denied the request.
The airline previously stated in a memo to its employees that it had put several rules, including the vaccine mandate, in place to protect all workers, and urged employees to go for vaccine boosters.
“Of all these efforts, the one that remains the most effective at protecting our employees and customers is our successful employee vaccination policy,” said Limacher.
According to United, five of the company employees who died during the COVID-19 pandemic had vaccine exemptions.
Other airlines have approached vaccine policy in various ways. Unvaccinated American Airlines employees were required to complete weekly health declarations, social distance, and wear masks. Southwest reported at the end of February that no employees had lost their jobs over vaccine mandates.
