Posted on 12/11/2021 3:14:03 AM PST by Kaslin
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” unless you are an employee of United Airlines who chooses your faith over CEO Scott Kirby’s illegally implemented vaccine mandate. Not since 2017, when the airline violently removed Dr. David Dao from an oversold flight, has a company acted so improperly. This time, it’s not the passengers in the crosshairs. Rather, United is taking aim at its loyal employees.
After rolling out a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in August, CEO Kirby threatened employees who sought religious and medical accommodations: “There will be very few people who get through the medical and religious exemptions … any pilot that’s decided they all the sudden, or any employee that’s all the sudden decided I’m really religious … you’re putting your job on the line. You’d better be very careful about that.”
However, more than 2,000 United employees are fighting back. Kirby’s edict is being challenged in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. While the legal argument centers around reasonable accommodations, it is foundationally a question of religious freedom. At this “woke” airline where people of all genders can pick their pronouns, the religious are conveniently omitted. Does an employer have the right to mandate his workforce violate their beliefs to satisfy a marketing scheme?
To get the airline 100% vaccinated before the holiday travel season, United violated most Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's “best practices” regarding reasonable accommodations. Strong-arm tactics, invasive inquiries, and public distribution of private medical information ensued. Union leaders joined the pressure campaign, and unvaccinated employees were forced to wear N95 respirators, a “scarlet letter,” as punishment and for identification.
Couched in false claims of safety, the hypocrisy of United’s actions abounds. Aimed at cutting costs, the airline quietly rescinded many of its onboard Covid mitigations procedures. Now, when parked at the gate, jets no longer use high-flow conditioned air from the auxiliary power unit filtered through the HEPA systems. The electrostatic spraying between every flight ceased. Most recently United returned to shared beverage cans and glassware in First Class. All of these facts (and others) show that United’s “safety” claims are—as a federal district court has recognized—a pretext for the company’s discrimination.
Meanwhile, just as courts are upholding worker rights, United grounded 300 of its most experienced pilots—a move that may detrimentally impact holiday schedules. These faithful pilots banned together with co-workers from all departments to stand for their faith and their medical autonomy forming Airline Employees 4 Health Freedom.
To date, AE4HF members have filed more than 1,800 claims with the EEOC to address United’s discrimination. Investigators have indicated support for the United employees, assisting at every step and working to consolidate cases. While the legal argument centers around Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and employees’ rights to reasonable accommodations, it is all about religious freedom.
Title VII discrimination also addresses the creation of a “hostile environment.” For the faithful at United, a hostile work environment is a daily reality. Supervisors and union officials pressure employees to violate their faith under threat of termination, effectively a quid pro quo. Harassing statements are posted in breakrooms and on social media while managers look the other way. Even those who acquiesce are not safe. For financial reasons, a single flight attendant with a young son violated her faith and subsequently experienced a life-threatening reaction to the shot. While in the hospital she missed the deadline to submit her vaccination card and was terminated anyway.
For many United faithful, the holiday season looks bleak. Unsatisfied with merely placing those who refuse to be part of his marketing plan on unpaid leave, Scrooge appears determined to destroy them. Indeed, United has gone far beyond just robbing employees of their paychecks. By keeping those granted “accommodations” on “active” status, United blocks workers from seeking outside aviation employment, accessing their 401K savings, and using medical insurance benefits.
A recent decision from the Fifth Circuit, however, provides hope for the 2,000-plus faithful litigants. That case held that forcing one to choose between a “jab and a job” is irreparable harm. Whether the employees get an injunction in time to save Christmas will not be the end of the story. AE4HF members will continue to ensure United is accountable for its Title VII violations in federal court. In the meantime, though, United employees will continue to pray that their story mirrors “A Christmas Carol” and that Scrooge sees the error of his ways, becoming the good-hearted man he should have been all along.
Captain Sherry Walker along with Captains Laura Cox and Danielle Runyon, Esq. are founders of Airline Employees 4 Health Freedom (Jobs4jabs.org).
This link explains a lot...
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/ual/institutional-holdings
Doctor David Dao should have been removed from that flight, and jailed.
EASY DONT FLY UNITED AND LET THEM TANK THE REST WILL GET THE MESSAGE.
Agree!
they wont do much right now during Christmas season to punish the pilots because they need the money. But come January, I’ll bet the house they’ll go after them big time when travel season end.
United CEO Scott Kirby: “any employee that’s all the sudden decided I’m really religious ... you’re putting you job on the line.”
What a total @$$hole.
But, there should be no need for a religious exemption.
Why has the FACT that the (not) vaccines are experimental, untested, dangerous and DEADLY not prevailed? Although hidden and suppressed the VAERS data, which is acknowledged as underreported, proves this.
Are all the courts as corrupt as John Roberts?!
Actually reasonable companies pretty much fold any sort of objection under “religious”. You don’t actually have to be religious at all. A better description is “personal beliefs”.
When the United CEO made his smug declaration back in early fall of how many employees had finally complied with the vaccine mandate, somebody made note of the headcount in the press release and compared it to the number given in their latest 10Q filing, which would have been from only a couple of months prior.
Their conclusion was that either United had given bad information on a Federal report (highly unlikely), or the airline had just lost 20-25% of its workforce in a short time. I wonder if anybody’s followed up on that?
What he did was technically a criminal act, do you disagree?
“Captain Sherry Walker along with Captains Laura Cox and Danielle Runyon...”
And as bad as this mandate is, they don’t even hire men anymore to be captains.
Obviously unfamiliar with Saul/Paul.
United got $5 billion in CARES Act taxpayer $$$$ and are not acting too grateful for it!
-- Both the vaxed and the unvaxed can contract the Fauci Flu (i.e., "test positive") ... no difference as far as the unvaxed being a "special threat" to anyone else
-- Both the vaxed and the unvaxed can spread the Fauci Flu ... no difference as far as the unvaxed being a "special threat" to anyone else
-- Both the vaxed and the unvaxed can get sick with the Fauci Flu ... the only difference being that the vaxed may not get as sick ...
... but what does that have anything to do with me being unvaxed? Why am I a "special threat" to anyone else as to how sick they may get?
Just as with the vile lie of forced masking to provide protection from the Fauci Flu (masks provide no protection ... absolutley none at all), so is this experimental therapeutic treatment which has been redefined by medical "experts" as a "vaccine" ... a potentially lethal therapeutic at that.
Try it yourself ... ask the question though you'll likely need to walk the frightened vaxee through the logical basis of your query. As for me, I've given up on trying to help people escape their coma of irrational fear and woeful ignorance brought on -- and sustained by -- the Fauci Flu ... I just want to understand why we differ. Cheers!
No, I don’t. all I’m saying it was United Express which at the time I’m not sure was even a subsidiary.
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