70+ Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA) Employees Speak Up Against Vaccine Mandates
More than 70 of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) employees are openly opposing vaccine mandates for employment. The United States' federal vaccine mandate will require all JPL employees to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8, 2021 or face potential termination. In all, the JPL employs about 5,000 people.
Members of the group JPLNoVaxMandate protested on October 28th from 7 AM to 12 PM at Oak Grove Drive and Foothill Boulevard, near Hahamongna Watershed Park.
In speaking with the group for a statement, they told me:
"Our organization represents a portion of the JPL community, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, who are vehemently opposed to medical mandates and the subsequent violations to medical privacy. Our group consists of over 70 employees of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and includes engineers, scientists, technicians, contractors, and administrators.
Many of our members face termination following a December 8th vaccination deadline as imposed by the Federal Government, and we are fighting to protect our JPL community members' careers and livelihoods.
The purpose of our organization is to appeal to the JPL administration, NASA, and the Federal Government to support and respect JPL employees' fundamental human rights. Medical mandates are a violation of the most basic of human rights, which include bodily autonomy and the right to choose what enters into one's body. Our members have dedicated their lives to serving NASA's missions, including the most recent landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars this past year.Many of us now face the addition of a Covid-19 vaccine to the original terms and conditions of our employment, which represents a significant alteration of the contract under which current employees were hired. This is unacceptable, and we at JPLNoVaxMandate stand together to oppose this.
We are currently in contact with groups at 11 other NASA centers across the country who also stand against these national mandates, each with members facing impending termination for a failure to comply with the federal mandate policy. Together, we are mounting a resistance against what we perceive as an egregious violation of human rights, and we will continually fight to protect our members' medical freedom."- JPLNoVaxMandate
Taylor Ingram, a business administrator at JPL, strongly believes the new mandate will cause many issues at JPL.
"It's going to impact every aspect of JPL life. Projects aren't going to be able to deliver on time. Families are going to not have the support that they need. Missions could be impacted. We don't know what it's going to take or look like at this point.”
Mandates are already causing a lot of issues for many companies around the globe.
We recently published an article regarding a shortage of healthcare workers across North America, which of course impacts the healthcare citizens have access to.
In New York City, 26 fire stations recently shut down due to vaccine mandates. In New York State, 70,000 healthcare workers were facing termination as they expressed that they would not comply with vaccine mandates.
Sign up for our Newsletter and join us on Telegram, Instagram and Facebook for more news.