Nearly all city workers have complied with Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine policy, but 68 are getting fired

Eight months after Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine mandate for city workers was supposed to take effect, the administration announced Tuesday that all but 68 of the city’s 22,000 unionized employees are now in compliance with the policy.

That doesn’t mean that almost all city employees are vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly 3,000 employees have obtained religious or medical exemptions from the mandate, and are required to test regularly to go to work.

The 68 employees who are not in compliance with the policy will be terminated soon, but dates will vary due to differing levels of paid time off, Kenney’s office said.

Fifteen city employees had already been fired for failing to comply with a vaccine mandate that took effect for the city’s 3,200 non-unionized employees in December 2021.

» READ MORE: Philly has started placing unvaccinated city workers on leave. Here’s how the numbers break down.

Tuesday’s announcement brings to an end a chain of events that began in November 2021, when Kenney said city workers had to be vaccinated by Jan. 14, 2022. The mandate was delayed for months as the administration struggled through negotiations with each of the four major municipal unions, ending when an arbitration panel in May ruled that the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22, the staunchest opponent of the policy, had to comply.

Kenney said Tuesday that “safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines remain the best way to protect Philadelphians and save lives.”

“We have reached nearly 100 percent compliance with our vaccination mandate for our represented workforce, and this success was possible because of the hard work and partnership between our City labor partners and our Administration team,” he said in a statement. “I am proud of our City’s workforce who, as public servants, bear a responsibility to mitigate the harm that would result from inadvertent transmission.”

The 68 employees being terminated include 39 who work in the Streets Department, 13 in the city jails, seven in the Philadelphia Water Department, six in the Police Department, two in Parks & Recreation, and one in the Commerce Department, which includes airport workers.

No firefighters are being terminated, despite the union’s steadfast opposition to the policy and the relatively high level of exemptions obtained by the firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs it represents. Local 22 president Mike Bresnan said last week that about 700 of the the union’s 2,300 members had obtained exemptions, almost all of them religious.

“It is a relief that none of our members are being terminated and their livelihoods destroyed,” Bresnan said in a statement. “I feel for the 68 people that the Mayor is hurting and their families. It’s a shame they are not members of Local 22 because we would have fought like hell for them.”

» READ MORE: Philly’s firefighters union wants unvaccinated members to get 8 hours of overtime pay for COVID tests

To obtain religious exemptions, the city required employees to sign affidavits stating that they have sincerely held religious beliefs preventing them from obtaining the coronavirus vaccine.

The other three unions — District Councils 33 and 47 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 — all reached agreements with the city over the policy’s implementation without attempting to block it completely. Local 22, meanwhile, said it would oppose any mandate that could lead to firefighters being fired at a time when the department was already short-staffed.

Because the labor agreements all included clauses that delayed the start of the policy until all four unions were subject to the mandate, the firefighters’ opposition stretched the process out for months and led to an uncomfortable showdown with Kenney, a staunch union supporter whose father was a firefighter.

The arbitration decision overruling Local 22′s objections set July 1 as the deadline for all unionized employees to get in line with the mandate, placing out-of-compliance employees on 30-day unpaid “U-Vax leave,” after which they would be terminated if they had not gotten vaccinated or applied for exemptions.

Kenney’s policy does not cover employees outside the control of his administration, such as those in independent agencies like the School District of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Parking Authority, or those who work for independently elected offices such as City Council or the district attorney’s office.

Council President Darrell L. Clarke last year instituted a separate vaccine requirement for employees of the legislature. All Council members and Kenney have said they are vaccinated.