GM to warn non-compliant workers

Safety policy requires reporting vaccination status

General Motors confirmed Monday it will start issuing letters of safety violations to a “very small number” of salaried employees who had not yet complied with the company’s confidential vaccination reporting mandate by close of business Friday.

That’s after GM sent several reminders to them, GM spokeswoman Maria Raynal told the Free Press.

“Continued non-compliance will result in a second safety letter violation and a reduction of the performance bonus,” Raynal said. “However, the vast majority of GM employees are in compliance.”

GM’s action follows a memo it sent to managers on Sept. 22, Raynal said. That letter gave managers two full business days to talk to employees who were not in compliance to warn them if they continued to fail to report vaccination status, it could lead to safety violation letters and a partial loss of a company performance bonus. Raynal did not immediately have details as to how much of a cut to the bonus it might entail.

Raynal said GM started sending safety violation letters to those salaried employees who remain out of compliance Monday. The letters will continue to go out to non-compliant employees through the end of the week. At that time, if white-collar workers still remain out of compliance with the mandate to report their vaccination status, then a second safety violation letter and a partial loss of their bonus will follow, Raynal said.

GM has not required workers to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but last week at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island, GM

President Mark Reuss addressed a question about why GM is not mandating that its workforce be vaccinated.

Reuss said GM leadership is having difficult conversations around a vaccine mandate after President Joe Biden said earlier this month that all employers with more than 100 workers must require employees to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly.

“We just want to encourage all of our employees to get vaccinated,” Reuss said.

But at the same time, he said, “we don’t want fear in the workplace. So that’s where we are right now. That can change depending on what the law is or what the federal government actually says you have to do and we’ll obviously do that, but that’s where we are today.”

In August, GM confirmed it had confidentially asked its roughly 48,000 U.S. salaried workers to share their vaccine information so it could assess overall immunity levels and guide its safety protocols. GM required those employees who said they were fully vaccinated to submit proof of their status.

Detroit Three automakers have been working with the UAW, the union that represents most hourly autoworkers, on workplace safety and vaccinations in its factories.

If GM or another automaker wanted to mandate vaccination of the hourly workforce, it would be subject to negotiation with the union, UAW President Ray Curry has said.

The Wall Street Journal initially reported on the memo Friday.

“As the health and safety of our employees is our top priority, we are pleased that virtually every GM salaried employee has reported their vaccine status via our confidential reporting tool,” Raynal said in a statement Monday. “We continue to work with a very small number of employees to reach 100% completion. The overwhelmingly high response rate indicates that our employees support a culture of safety and keeping themselves and their co-workers healthy.”