Alaska Airlines is now requiring its employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, making it the latest in a growing list of airlines and other companies to implement such a mandate.
The airline said in an email to Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air employees that they would have to be vaccinated or apply for an exemption, The Seattle Times reported. The message didn’t set a hard deadline on when employees needed to be vaccinated, though it could be as early as Dec. 8, the newspaper reported.
Andrea Schneider, Alaska Airlines’ senior vice president for people, said in a memo that the decision is in line with President Biden
Joe BidenFrance (and Britain) should join the Quad Election denialists smacked down by Idaho secretary of state Under Biden, the US could fall further behind in the Arctic MORE’s recent executive order requiring federal contractors to be vaccinated.
Schneider said the company’s mandate applies to the airline’s subsidiaries and some of its contractors, according to the Times.
Employees who have an exemption may be subject to protocols like “weekly testing, continued masking and social distancing, modified work schedules or locations, delayed training class start dates, the inability to attend in-person events or unpaid leaves of absence,” she wrote.
The Hill has reached out to Alaska Airlines for comment.
In early September, Alaska announced that it would incentivize employees to be vaccinated with $200 bonuses. According to the newspaper, the deadline for the incentive will be moved from Oct. 15 to Dec. 1.
United Airlines was the first airline to announce that it was mandating vaccines in August. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has begun laying off roughly 600 employees who refused to comply with the mandate.
Separately, JetBlue Airways told its employees that the federal mandate means that its employees will have to be fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg.