Postal workers union fires back at Biden over COVID-19 vaccine mandate

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Unions are once again beefing with the man whom they’d falsely thought would be their savior, Democrat President Joe Biden.

This time they’re upset over reports that the president plans to mandate vaccines for all federal employees.

One union, the American Postal Workers Union that represents over 200,000 U.S. Postal Service employees, released a statement Wednesday bluntly stating that it’s not the federal government’s job to force vaccine diktats on people.

“Maintaining the health and safety of our members is of paramount importance. While the APWU leadership continues to encourage postal workers to voluntarily get vaccinated, it is not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent,” the union said.

“Issues related to vaccinations and testing for COVID-19 in the workplace must be negotiated with the APWU. At this time the APWU opposes the mandating of COVID-19 vaccinations in relation to U.S. postal workers,” the union added.

Even Randi Weingarten, a known mask zealot who serves as the president of the second-largest teachers’ union in the nation, has expressed opposition to a federal worker vaccine mask mandate, arguing that such things must be negotiated between “employers and workers.”

“In order for everyone to feel safe and welcome in their workplaces, vaccinations must be negotiated between employers and workers, not coerced,” she said in a statement earlier in the week on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers.

“We believe strongly that everyone should get vaccinated unless they have a medical or religious exception, and that this should be a mandatory subject of negotiation for employers to keep their employees safe and build trust,” she added.

This statement puts her at odds with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which could be a problem because the AFT is, in fact, a sub-group of the larger AFL–CIO organization.

“Yes, we do,” infamously pro-Biden AFL–CIO President Richard Trumka said when asked during a C-SPAN interview earlier this week whether he supports a vaccine mandate for federal workers.

“It’s important. If you are coming back into the workplace, you have to know what’s around you. If you come back in and you’re not vaccinated, everybody in that workplace is jeopardized. If we don’t know whether you’ve been vaccinated or not, we can’t make the proper accommodations to make sure that you are protected and everybody else’s protected,” he continued.

“So the best thing that can happen is a vaccination so we could prevent all of these variants from going on. … What we need to do now is get more people vaccinated. The mandate is a very acceptable way to do that,” he added.

Listen:

Note that Trumka was nominated earlier this month by the president to serve as the next commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Meanwhile, the International Association of Fire Fighters, a union that was an ardent supporter of Biden and “organized heavily behind his primary campaign,” according to Politico, has made it clear it won’t abide by any vaccine mandate.

“We’re not doing any mandates. We’re not advocating any mandates for vaccination,” IAFF press secretary Tim Burn said to Politico.

This could be a problem for the Biden administration. In fact, it already is.

“Behind the scenes, labor leaders and White House officials clashed after Biden on Tuesday publicly stated that the White House was considering vaccine mandates for federal employees,” Politico confirmed.

“Labor leaders called the move premature, complaining that it would prompt a litany of requests for exemptions and fearing it would only further alienate a percentage of their membership that was already unlikely to get vaccinated, according to two people briefed on the discussions,” according to Politico.

This could be a blessing for Republicans. Federal workers have long donated overwhelmingly to Democrats, but if some of those Democrats wind up feeling alienated because of a vaccine mandate, they might conceivably sit out the 2022 or 2024 election — or they might even possibly vote for a Republican.

But it gets worse.

According to Colin Sharkey, the executive director of the Association of American Educators, a smaller teachers’ union with only 25,000 or so members, even some vaccinated members have expressed discomfort about a vaccine mandate.

She “said there’s been uptick in calls from members about the prospects of vaccine mandate. Most come from people who don’t want the shot for themselves, but others come from vaccinated teachers who resent the idea of losing local control about personnel decisions,” according to MarketWatch.

“You can certainly sense the frustration of educators who have enough on their plate as it is,” she said in her own words.

If Biden does go through with a federal worker vaccine mandate, he’s expected to announce it Thursday.

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