Mayo Clinic fired 700 employees Tuesday who didn’t comply with the mandate policy to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by Monday, CBS Minnesota reports.
This unemployed staff made up about 1% of Mayo’s 73,000 workforce.
Mayo officials stated they are “sad” to lose valuable employees as they claim their priority is to keep patients, the workforce, visitors and communities safe.
Employees released Tuesday can return to Mayo Clinic for future job openings if they get vaccinated.
“If individuals released from employment choose to get vaccinated at a later date, the opportunity exists for them to apply and return to Mayo Clinic for future job openings,” the clinic’s statement said.
This comes days after the Washington Post published an article highlighting the employment crisis in hospital, quoting a physician from Mayo.
“…the truth is that we are at the limit. … The people who draw blood. The people who work night shifts. The people who sit in rooms with patients who are delirious. They’re tired. We’re all tired,” the December 30 article reported on the quote from a critical care physician at the Mayo Clinic.
Minnesota lawmakers drew up a letter of protest, calling on the hospital to reverse their course on this move.
“It is with great consternation that we now write this letter out of concern for the Mayo Clinic’s current
employee COVID-19 vaccine mandate policy. We started hearing from a large number of highly
concerned Mayo employees a number of weeks ago concerning this shift in internal policy. We also
heard of the onerous and daunting electronic religious exemption application process that employees
felt set them up for failure and allowed for little personalization. Concern and communication from
those employees only grew as medical and religious exemptions for many were denied.
“This top down, heavy-handed, all-or-none employee policy does not fit the reputation or image we
know the Mayo Clinic to have. Religious exemptions seem to be difficult to obtain and inconsistent.
There are examples of one spouse working at Mayo receiving the religious exemption and the other
spouse did not. No one will share with employees why they were denied. This is all highly disheartening,
especially considering that Mayo is an institution that was founded upon religious principles and by
Franciscan Sisters with sincerely held religious beliefs.
“Your amazing employees stepped up under unimaginable pandemic conditions over the last year and a
half, exposing themselves and their families to a then mostly unknown virus and working long, grueling
hours to take care of sick patients. Many of your employees were sickened by the virus at that time.
They did all this willingly to serve Mayo Clinic patients and the people of Minnesota. They did so for all
these months without the protection of any vaccine”
Read that letter here.
