ELMA (WBEN) - As more than 200 Moog employees staged a walkout Monday afternoon due to the company's vaccine mandate, employees held a similar but final demonstration Tuesday.
Last Wednesday, Moog employees were told they would need to receive the vaccine by December 8 or lose their job. The mandate came after the federal government ordered workers with federal contracts to be vaccinated.
There were fewer people demonstrating outside Tuesday, but employee Matt Schieber says support is growing online and in the community.
"The first and foremost goal of this organization is to keep Moog employees employed," said Schieber. "We don't want the federal government determining who can and cannot be employed in this community based on a medical procedure."
Schieber added that it's already difficult finding qualified employees for Moog due to the highly specialized nature of certain positions, and he doesn't want to see valuable employees lost to this vaccine mandate.
"It's been a difficult challenge in good times to get the right employees with the right skill set, and that's why I believe these employees are the people that can lead this charge because we are so specialized and we are so passionate," he said. "If we lose any key members in key situations at Moog, it's going to have a rippling effect through the community."
The group has retained prominent attorney Todd Aldinger with the hope of prompting a lawsuit to halt the December 8 deadline.
"This is going to be the last day that we're demonstrating outside of Moog because we're all Moog employees, and like I've said, the goal of this is to keep Moog employees employed, so we're going to get back to work tomorrow and work as hard as we can to make up for whatever damages we might have caused during this event," said Schieber. 'We're going to keep our voices heard, but we're going to keep working."
