Florida aerospace workers protest federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate
MELBOURNE, Fla. - Fed-up workers across the nation continue to push back against vaccine mandates.
In September, President Joe Biden announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements. They mandated that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for COVID-19 weekly. In addition, he signed an executive order to require vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out.
With this, starting December 8th, more than 100 million Americans will be subject to vaccine requirements ordered by the President. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will make it mandatory for companies with more than 100 employees to follow the vaccine mandate or have regular COVID-19 testing.
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Federal contractors in Central Florida have been impacted by these requirements and are speaking out.
For example, aerospace workers at Northrop Grumman in Melbourne will soon be required to be fully vaccinated. Some of them are protesting the mandate outside the Melbourne facility on Monday. They said that they do not want to be forced to get the vaccine if they choose not to and are calling the mandate "unconstitutional."
President Biden believes vaccine mandates have worked for years and will again now.
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"Folks, vaccination requirements work and there's nothing new about it. They've been around for decades. We've been living with these requirements throughout our lives," he previously said. "Students, health care professionals, our troops have been required to see vaccination for everything from polio to measles to mumps to rubella. And the reason most people in America don't worry about polio, measles, mumps, rubella is because they've been vaccinated."
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