At least 600 Google employees have signed a manifesto opposing the company’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate that is said to be applicable to all 150,000 employees, office-going and remote, in line with requirements set forth by the White House.
The Biden administration had set a deadline on Jan. 4 for all employees in the country working for companies with more than 100 staff members, to get fully vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19. In response, Google asked employees to upload their vaccination status to Google’s “environmental health and safety” team by Dec. 3. Many workers have been returning back to their offices after the easing of pandemic restrictions.
The manifesto asks management to create a new mandate which is “inclusive of all Googlers,” and requests fellow workers to “oppose the mandate as a matter of principle.”
Regarding the uploading of individual employee vaccine details, the document said, “I do not believe Google should be privy to the health and medical history of Googlers and the vaccination status is no exception.”
Google has maintained its stance and said that all employees who work with government contracts, whether they work in the office or not, must be vaccinated.
“As we’ve stated to all our employees and the author of this document, our vaccination requirements are one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running. We firmly stand behind our vaccination policy,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC.
Manifesto authors called Google’s leadership “coercive,” and also sent an open letter to Google’s chief health officer, Karen DeSalvo, MD, writing that the “implications are chilling” for companies around the world if a market leader like Google were to implement vaccine mandates.
“It normalizes medical intervention compulsion not only for COVID-19 vaccination but for future vaccines and possibly even non-vaccine interventions by extension,” the document says. “It justifies the principle of division and unequal treatment of Googlers based on their personal beliefs and decisions.”
The workers’ opposition comes at a time when Google is vying to get into the health care industry among its other ventures.
Based on the data from CDC, 82.2 percent of all American adults have at least been partially vaccinated against COVID-19.
Google representatives did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
