'How Many Employees Were Fired?': Marsha Blackburn Presses United Airlines CEO Over Vaccine Mandate

uh senator blackburn thank you madam chairman and thank you to each of you for being here today as you can see there's a wide range of issues that people are concerned about um mr kirby i want to come to you first in november bloomberg published a piece on how united airlines is leading the charge on implementing president biden's unconstitutional vaccine mandate u.s district judge mark pittman stated that you expressed and i'm quoting skepticism and apparent disdain for any religiously motivated exemption request so what we're finding out and i've got a tennessean that is in this group i represent the state of tennessee that there are individuals that were denied that all of your religious exemptions were denied so we're also finding out about their pay having been cut at the time that that exemption was was filed so before they filed the exemption did you inform these workers that they were not going to be paid even if they applied for a religious exemption well uh thank you senator and first we did implement a vaccine requirement at united airlines we did it in august before there were any federal state before there were any requirements from anyone one one direction or the other um we did it purely as a the right thing to do for safety and i'm happy to explain why if you'd like but we did it purely for safety and and did it well before any federal requirements we i think you got some perhaps incorrect information we accepted about 80 percent of the religious requests so 80 of the religious requests were were accepted okay but the other 20 that you did not accept did were they made aware that they would not be paid even though they were working while their uh request was being considered that they would not be paid when that was denied so we notified people uh anyone whose request was the 20 percent who who did not get a religious exemption we gave them notification and gave them approximately 35 days from that date to get vaccinated if they wanted to and they were fully paid for that entire time and to my knowledge almost all of them chose to get vaccinated okay leave the company so how many people are how many employees were fired and um because of this and then how much money did they lose do you want to clarify that for the record so we got 99.7 of our employees vaccinated which uh for a workforce in the united states of just under 70 000 means that about 200 people chose to leave the company about 200 right okay all right um well it seems like you're all talking about needing employees so it seems like you also would be able to find a workaround on this for people who either have had covet don't want the vaccine cannot take the vaccine i've talked to so many people who medically have been advised do not get vaccinated because they have a complex medical issue so it um seems like you all could find a workaround on this i want to talk to each of you about um what is happening with 5g implementation because we had six former chairs of the fcc that sent a letter to chairman rosenwarsel and the ntia's acting administrator regarding their concerns with the faa's decision to delay 5g implementation and at the end of the letter the chairs and i'm quoting encourage all stakeholders to work together toward a speedy resolution of the issues in this ban and to ensure these surprises do not become a recurring feature of american spectrum management in the future the recent decision undermines america's efforts to remain a leader in 5g and of course we're looking at what is happening with china with their belt and road initiative with great power competition and um so we are quite concerned about this mr lotter i want to come to you on this because it is my understanding that delta has invested heavily in 5g for security so we would hope that you all are looking for a path forward to work not only with us but with regulators on the deployment of 5g and making certain that it is not not delayed well senator thank you and i i can't speak specifically to any investment in 5g i do know that the safety concerns uh with aircraft in aviation are very real and i also know that there's a solution here we've seen it in other countries as they've implemented 5g and with a combination of power adjustments and location we could absolutely uh solve this and live in a world where there is 5g available there are 39 countries that have implemented 5g and have had no issues that we're aware of have any of you any of you on the panel experienced any issues or problems with 5g no um but i i i think if you were to ask us what our number one concern is here in the near term it is the deployment of 5g because the faa has issued an airworthiness directive that would significantly impact our operations once it is deployed on january the 5th so that's the essence of the concern it's not an airline concern per se the faa is uncomfortable with the safety risk and as a consequence the impact on our operations to mitigate that would be a significant setback seems like we could find a workaround on this i'm over time but i appreciate that and we will continue the conversation on the issue thank you madame thank you for bringing that issue up senator blumenthal thanks madam chair uh welcome to all you thanks for being here i

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 358,400

Keywords: Sen. Marsha Blackburn, vaccine mandates, Senate

Id: sJCZ52SUDoo

Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021