Hundreds of workers at a General Electric Gas Power service plant held a walkout on Thursday morning.
The staff at the Greenville plant in South Carolina walked out in a response to the Biden administration’s executive order demanding all federal contractors receive the COVID vaccine.
It was a crowd of about three hundred people at the Greenville plant, which employs around 3200 workers.
The sentiments expressed were a sense of betrayal of working people deemed “essential” who are now being told to hit the road.
“All GE U.S. employees will be fully vaccinated or receive a medical or religious accommodation by December 8th as required in the order,” a GE spokesperson told local outlet WMBF.
Employees said they were only told about this last week.
Another GE employee spoke on the record to another outlet.
“It’s important for me to be out here because of the government overreach and infringement on our personal liberties. What business does the government have telling you what you can and cannot do with your own body, concerning this vaccine,” staffer Neil Slater told WSPA.
Corporations are all responding to a presidential order that does not exist. Several Republican attorneys general argue that President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate cannot be enforced because there is no rule.
The president’s initial order indicated that OSHA will be the overseeing and enforcement agency for the mandate, which has yet to happen. The agency plans to implement and enforce the vaccine mandate under a very obscure authority known as “emergency temporary standards” which has only been utilized a few times over the course of its history.
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