Despite being approved for religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine, an employee reported that 140 staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, face unpaid leave beginning Oct. 15.
Leon Workman, a Linux systems engineer with ORNL, told The Epoch Times that though he was approved for a religious and medical exemption, he will join the 140 employees who will be left without a paycheck.
“It’s blatant religious discrimination,” Workman said. “A religious exemption without an accommodation is not a religious exemption.”
The research laboratory is managed by the University of Tennessee-Battelle (UT-Battelle), a not-for-profit company established to operate the U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored center comprised of 5,500 staff members.
In a Sept. 22 email Workman disclosed, ORNL’s Human Resources Director Jody Zahn told employees who had filed for an exemption that regular testing and allowing employees to continue to work from home, as they have been doing since January 2020, would cause “undue hardship” on the center.
“In evaluating your request, UT-Battelle has concluded that the only reasonable accommodation that we can provide to you without presenting an undue hardship is to allow you to remain a UT-Battelle employee, but without access to campus, by providing you with an unpaid leave of absence,” Zahn said. “You may elect to designate vacation time use prior to beginning your unpaid leave, but if you do not do so, your unpaid leave of absence will begin on Oct. 16 if you choose to remain unvaccinated.”
Zahn cited a high volume of approved requests, high transmission and low vaccination rates, a threat to health and safety of employees, and cost of testing the unvaccinated, as well as an intent for the center to bring remote workers back to the institute, as reasons for undue hardship.
“But unpaid leave is an undue hardship on an employee,” Workman said.
Workman filed for religious exemption in September and contracted the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19.
After being treated with monoclonal antibody infusion therapy, he applied for a medical exemption in addition to the religious exemption because of the CDC’s recommendation that one not get vaccinated 90 days after the treatment, he said.
The Fact Sheet
Human Resources formed a panel, with a fact sheet, and summoned 24 employees to interview regarding their exemption.
“Two days later they claimed that two individuals who were involved tested positive for COVID-19, so the next day the panel did a blanket approval of all religious exemptions without any kind of adjudication or discernment,” Workman said.
According to Workman, the panel had “aggressively pursued” each employee’s religious beliefs, using a fact sheet.
In the fact sheet, ORNL says that fetal cell lines have been used in earlier vaccines, over-the-counter medical products, and “have been used in the past by consumer product companies including Pepsi, Nestle, Kraft, Campbell Soup, and Coca-Cola to test the ingredients and enhance flavor.”
The fact sheet claims that COVID-19 vaccines don’t contain fetal cells or fetal cell products.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines being offered at ORNL “were designed on computers,” the fact sheet says, adding that “neither is produced using fetal cell lines.”
The fact sheet also claims that many religious faith leaders “favor COVID-19 vaccinations on the grounds of care for one’s neighbors, family, and self.”
Accompanying the fact sheet is the religious exemption certification form an employee must sign stating that he or she has read and understood the vaccination policy and the fact sheet.
“I am aware that fetal cell lines are used in the testing of other consumer products,” it says.
It then states that “honesty requires that we tell the truth, always, and that we do not mislead others,” therefore, “with this understanding,” the form asks that the employee to certify that he or she has not, does not, or will not “use any of the products identified above, nor any other product that was developed, produced, or tested using fetal cell lines.”
Among the products listed were over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol, Advil, and Preparation H.
Legal Recourse
Workman and about 80 other staff members involved have sought legal representation with Schaerr-Jaffe, the law firm representing United Airlines employees.
“We are hoping to have a temporary restraining order by Oct. 12, which would cause them to halt progress on forcing people on unpaid leave,” Workman said. In September, Schaerr-Jaffe negotiated a temporary restraining order that led to United Airlines agreeing to cease its plan to terminate 2,000 of its employees who declined to get the COVID-19 vaccine for religious or medical reasons.
A Stalemate
“They are scared to terminate us, probably because of misgivings about potential non-lawful termination, but it’s still a termination, although in a slow and painful way for the employees,” Workman said. “They are basically leaving us without paychecks for as long as it takes us to either force us to get the vaccine or to resign.”
ORNL was not immediately available for comment.
A senior Victoria Police officer has publicly resigned from the force during a live-streamed interview after expressing her objection to the way directions from the state’s chief health officer were being enforced in some situations.
In Australia, chief health officers have emergency powers under the Biosecurity Security Act 2015 to make and impose public health orders in attempts to protect human health from COVID-19.
Former Acting Senior Sergeant Krystle Mitchell, who has worked for Victoria Police for more than 16 years, appeared in police uniform in an interview with media studio Discernable, which aired on Friday night.
“I couldn’t be happier in terms of the work that I do on a daily basis,” she said in the video. “But behind that is all of my friends that are police officers, that are working the front line and are suffering every day enforcing [the Victorian chief health officer’s] directions that a vast majority, or certainly a great majority, don’t believe in and don’t want to enforce.
“The consequences of me being here today is that I will be resigning from Victoria Police, effective at the end of this interview, because the consequences of me coming out publicly would be dismissal,” she told Discernable host and founder Matthew Wong. “So I’m choosing to quit, and I’m quitting because I can’t remedy in my soul anymore the way in which my organisation that I love to work for is being used [to enforce health tyranny]… and the damage it’s causing in the reputation of Victoria Police and the damage it’s causing to the community.”
She described an incident when she and her partner were walking together in the city and witnessed “police everywhere doing their ‘reassurance patrols.'” She commented, “They’re not reassurance patrols, you’re not reassuring anybody in the community, you’re scaring people in the community that there’s that many police out in the city trying to stop mass gatherings.”
Mitchell explained why she decided to take the interview while still being employed within the police force instead of having resigned beforehand.
“In part, the reason that I wanted to do this whilst still serving and wearing the uniform today is so that the community can see that it isn’t all police that are against them and for police to see that it isn’t all protesters that are coming there to fight with you. It’s a minority,” she said. “There’s a minority on both sides and they’re the ones getting the attention in the media. The minority of the police … are using more force than is necessary to effect these arrests at protests, or to enforce [chief health officer] directions.”
The Epoch Times understands that Mitchell resigned on Friday morning, and she is now on personal leave and will not return to work.
Prior to her resignation, Mitchell worked in a non-operational role and did not work at any protests. Protesters Rally In Melbourne Calling For End To Victoria's Lockdown Restrictions
Speaking about Mitchell’s interview, Victoria Police said in a statement that officers have been working tirelessly for the past 18 months to enforce the chief health officer’s directions “aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus to keep all Victorians healthy and to save lives.”
“The comments in this interview in no way reflect the views of Victoria Police. The CHO directions are based on health advice and set by the Victorian Government. Victoria Police cannot pick and choose what laws it enforces. We acknowledge this has been an extremely difficult time for all Victorians who have had to give up so much,” the statement reads.
It continues “Just like the community, Victoria Police looks forward to the easing of restrictions and the eventual return to pre-COVID life.”
The statement also said that officers take their duty to protect and serve the community incredibly seriously, and the force understands “how fragile public trust can be” and that it was “important people can have confidence in what we do.”
It also addressed mandatory vaccination for members of the force, saying that while officers had important human rights, “these must be weighed against the interests of the community during this public health emergency.”
More anti-lockdown protests were organized in Melbourne on Saturday.
Victoria Police said it supported the right for people to peacefully protest “and this has not changed.”
“While now is not the time to protest due to risk of the spread of the virus and the current restrictions, Victoria Police is committed to facilitating peaceful protests once the directions allow,” the statement said.
Melbourne, a city in Victoria and has received global media attention after multiple videos emerged showing police attacking unarmed people, sometimes in a violent manner, amid local protests in recent weeks against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, passports, and lockdowns. The protests often occur on weekends at locations that organizers provide short notice for, to evade police interference.
Melbourne has seen the longest lockdown in the world. Lockdown restrictions continue across the city and parts of regional Victoria. The state continues to urge people to take the COVID-19 vaccine, with promises to ease restrictions once 80 percent of people are fully vaccinated.
Click on the links for Moderna, Pfizer, etc. to see which cell lines were used for each, and how.
Click further down on the page under New! Fetal Cell Line Chart to see where each fetal cell line was derived from.
I didn't know that most of the cell lines were from abortions in the 1960s and that all but two listed were from outside the US.
I read and commented on the BS thing about all the products involving fetal cell lines; it was a setup by a Catholic priest and some jerk female doctor who did a quick Goolag search for {medicine name} and {cell line}.
Good for them that they got a letter firm that helped the United airline employees.
Illegalities the company did after approving are:
- prying into the religious reasons,
- not accommodating (tests, WFH) like they had been doing prior to the shots availability
- retaliating by telling the employees they’d be put on unpaid leave