SAN JOSE — As a key deadline looms for city employees to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs, a contingent of public-safety workers led by the police union are pushing the city to scale back its mandate or risk losing as many as 140 cops who object to the new rules.
The San Jose Police Officers’ Association has been urging city labor officials to stick to the current requirement that city workers get vaccinated or be tested weekly, even as the highly infectious delta variant has brought Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 case numbers to rates not seen since vaccines became widely available this spring.
“The city rushed to enact a policy that is rife with unintended consequences that they did not fully think through, including a potential substantial number of officers who may resign or retire,” the union said in a statement. “Any departures will have a devastating negative impact on neighborhood safety; that is why we remain open to our test or vaccinate proposal that thus far the city has rejected.”
The city’s stricter employee vaccination mandate — announced last month and set to take effect Sept. 30 — will require vaccinations, and limit the weekly-testing alternative only to those eligible for a medical or religious exemption. The change partially mirrors new rules implemented by the federal government, which had a vaccinate-or-test standard until last week, when President Biden issued an order giving a broad swath of federal employees until Nov. 22 to get vaccinated, with no test-out option.
The City Manager’s Office confirmed that it plans to proceed with the vaccination deadline, but said in an email that “this does not mean that employees will be disciplined all at the same time” in cases of noncompliance.
“Of course, it’s a concern,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said Wednesday about the prospect of employee resignations. “But to recite the obvious, we’re in a pandemic and the only pathway through this pandemic to the other side is to comply with basic public health directives and vaccination is first among them.”
City data shows that as of Sept. 17, 87% of the San Jose Police Department’s about 1,800 on-duty employees — including 1,150 sworn officers — have submitted proof of vaccination. Overall, about 91% of 7,000 on-duty city employees have submitted proof of vaccination.
The remainder are not vaccinated or have not disclosed their status. There are also 511 city employees, including 45 in the police department, who are not currently working and won’t be required to comply until they return.
Liccardo said that a “significant number” of those believed to be unvaccinated — between 60 and 70 employees — are retirement eligible.
“There may be an acceleration by a few months for some, but we plan for retirements,” he said. “That’s why we have three academies every year.”
Matt Tuttle, president of San Jose Fire Fighters Local 230, said about 50 personnel, or 8% of the firefighting workforce, remains unvaccinated and that some are considering leaving because of the new mandate. He added that the union is also seeking a solution short of the stricter vaccination requirement.
“Our stance is that we want options for our membership, not termination,” Tuttle said in an email. “We need every firefighter available to assist at the fires occurring throughout the state as well as being available here in San Jose.”
Other city employee unions have opted not to fight the stricter vaccination rule. Municipal Employees’ Federation, AFSCME, Local 101 — San Jose’s largest city employee union whose roughly 2,500 members include emergency dispatchers, code-enforcement inspectors, librarians and city planners — is neutral about the next phase of the vaccination mandate.
“While the police association seems to be spending all their energy on reversing the mandate, AFSCME is focusing our efforts on making sure those with medical and religious exemptions are offered (temporarily) jobs that can be performed from home,” union representative John Tucker said in an email. “This seems to us to be the best way to move forward.”
Olympia Williams, president of CAMP, which represents about 500 full-time management-level employees, said Wednesday she was “thankful that our city is taking a proactive approach to ensuring that there are safe working conditions for all employees.”
The police union continues to object to how the city announced its mandate without consultation with labor. It has also criticized the city for lacking sufficient capacity to enforce the rules, and asserted there has been a lack of clarity about how requests for exemptions will be evaluated.
Under the initial vaccinate-or-test phase, the city reported that as of Sept. 16, 84 San Jose police employees were granted exemptions, one for medical reasons and 83 for religious beliefs. According to the city, exemption claims for the stricter vaccine mandate are being evaluated and that “reasonable accommodation options for each request are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”
An email Wednesday sent out by the city’s Office of Employee Relations signals that those who have been granted exemptions during the first phase will be exempted after Sept. 30, but will have to submit twice-weekly negative COVID-19 tests.
An employee getting their first dose by Oct. 1, the city says, will be granted time to receive any prescribed second dose without being in violation of the mandate. The City Manager’s Office stated that employees will be entitled to their standard due-process rights to challenge any potential discipline.
Still, it is unlikely any city employee would be fired on Oct. 1 for noncompliance. The city has said that it plans “to stagger any disciplinary actions to reduce service impacts and give employees additional opportunities to get vaccinated.”
“The good news is we’re seeing substantial increases in vaccination as we approach the deadline but we still have a ways to go,” Liccardo said. “Our first priority is to ensure that we can provide critical services to residents and it doesn’t do anyone any good to see emergency medical response or 911 response suffer.”