San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Pentagon not planning immediate firing of vaccine resisters
WASHINGTON — Facing criticism that mandates for COVID-19 vaccinations could force the Defense Department to fire thousands of civilians, contractors and troops, the Biden administration is signaling that vaccine resisters may get more time to comply.
President Joe Biden and administration officials have previously said Pentagon employees and contractors have to be vaccinated or face termination on a series of upcoming deadlines. This has led to fears that thousands of people responsible for national defense may soon be forced out of their jobs. Virtually every day, Republican lawmakers decry what they describe as a national security crisis in the offing.
The deadlines for vaccination vary, depending on the type of employee. And they have not changed. The first of them arrives Tuesday for active-duty Air Force personnel, and official service figures show that some 4 percent of the active-duty Air Force is still not fully vaccinated.
Three administration officials in the last couple of days have described the deadlines not as the dates when an ax will fall but rather as the start of an education process designed to persuade those who are resisting vaccination to reverse course.
Administration officials seem to be straddling a line — sending a strict signal that the U.S. government will vaccinate its people on the one hand, while reassuring Americans that enforcement will not come so hard and fast as to harm U.S. military readiness or the broader economy.
“U.S. military leaders are sending a tough message to the troops to get it done,” said Mike Hanzel, a civilian attorney who specializes in military law. “However, my sense is that their goal here is not to punish or separate large numbers of service members, which could be counterproductive to overall readiness, but rather to encourage compliance. In practice, while anyone who failed to get their vaccine is at risk once the deadline passes, I believe most will still have an opportunity to get the vaccine and avoid involuntary separation.”
Under a variety of directives, federal government civilians, contractors and U.S. military personnel must all be vaccinated as a condition of employment or of receiving contracts, except for those exempted for religious or medical reasons.
The deadlines for people whose work connects them to the Pentagon to get fully vaccinated generally fall in November and December, though Army reservists have until June of next year to get their shots.
On Thursday, Stephen Morani, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary for sustainment, addressing the Nov. 22 deadline for Defense Department civilians to be fully vaccinated, described the enforcement process as more pedagogical than punitive.
“There will be escalation in disciplinary actions that will go through a process,” Morani said at a House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee hearing. “Nobody is going to be fired on the 22nd. Education is critical in this space — to educate people about the safety of it and the risk of not having it.”
Likewise, Ashish Vazirani, the president’s nominee to be the Pentagon’s deputy under secretary for personnel and readiness, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he supports the mandate but believes it will be sensitively enforced.
“It’s my understanding that there is an administrative process that allows for exemptions, whether they’re medically necessary or due to religious belief, and then progressing administrative actions to address a service member who may decline a vaccine,” Vazirani said, addressing the committee’s top Republican, James Inhofe of Oklahoma.
Inhofe, for his part, said: “I can’t think of anything that would be worse than if we were to find ourselves in a situation where we’re letting people go, we’re firing people.”
The military services have all said that uniformed personnel who are documented as having refused to be vaccinated by the deadline may face what is known as separation — or what civilians call firing.
But the services have sent different and sometimes unclear signals on whether less strict punishments might be tried before separation and whether those who miss the deadline but comply later will still be punished.