Federal vaccine discipline delayed

Workers won’t face punishments until 2022 for lack of shot

WASHINGTON — Federal employees who have not complied with the coronavirus vaccine mandate will not face aggressive discipline including unpaid suspensions or firing until at least early next year, according to guidance from the White House sent to unions.

The American Federation of Government Employees said Monday that administration officials have told the union that agencies for now will continue offering counseling and education to the roughly 3.5% of workers who have yet to get a vaccine or request an exemption.

Agencies will pursue only “education and counseling efforts through this holiday season as the first step in an enforcement process” and take no further actions beyond a possible letter of reprimand “for most employees who have not yet complied with the vaccination requirement until the new calendar year begins in January,” according to the White House message to agencies.

The guidance comes as concerns over the globally spreading omicron variant led President Joe Biden on Monday to again urge Americans to get vaccines and boosters. As of last week, 92% of roughly 3.5 million federal and military personnel had received at least one shot, while 4.5% had requested exemptions.

The White House disputed that the guidance represents a change in when employees could face more serious consequences for ignoring the mandate. Federal workers faced an initial deadline last week to show that they’d gotten at least one shot or had requested an exemption.

“Nothing has changed on our deadline or our approach to the federal employee vaccine requirement,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday, noting that counseling has “long been our approach and our policy.”

Union leaders said they supported giving unvaccinated workers leeway to get shots.

“The administration has done the right thing by listening to federal workers,” federation President Everett Kelley said in a statement, suggesting that the guidance would “give those who haven’t yet gotten vaccinated some peace of mind this holiday season.”

Attorneys who represent federal employees said it is common for agencies to hold off on disciplinary actions of all kinds around the holidays. They also said that the administration, having said all along that it hoped to avoid firing people for failure to comply with the mandate, would probably keep incentivizing vaccinations rather than punishing employees who resist.

“I’m not going to be surprised if agencies slow-roll this process if only to slowroll the associated headaches that come with it,” said Debra D’Agostino, a founding partner at The Federal Practice Group law firm in Washington. She said that even early next year, supervisors of unvaccinated employees are not likely to impose harsh discipline in every case.

“Setting aside the issue of the legality of the mandate itself, [some] employees who have been teleworking full since March 2020 are going to have credible arguments that removing them is not in the interest of the efficiency of the service or is overly harsh in light of their length of service, performance and lack of prior discipline,” she said.

Thus far, no agency has set a time frame for when it plans to step up discipline against unvaccinated employees without exemptions. Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough has said, for example, that the process at his agency could take months.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represent about 150,000 federal workers, including many at the Internal Revenue Service, said it plans to continue to encourage its members to get vaccinated and is encouraging them to consult with a medical professional.

“It is helpful to remember… that the goal is protect the health of federal workers and not to punish them,” union President Tony Reardon said in a statement.