Los Angeles city leaders are scheduled to meet with union reps Wednesday morning about a proposed plan to require all employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Employees who opt out would need to take weekly tests for the coronavirus. Similar plans for municipal employees in other cities have seen pushback from workers and questions about the requirements.
Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said he plans to introduce a motion on Wednesday that will direct the city to produce a plan on requiring COVID-19 vaccinations of workers.
“The emphasis here is not to be punitive, it is to be proactive,” said Ridley-Thomas.
“It is to say we need to be safe and we need to be healthy when we come to work. [We should] not put ourselves and certainly not others at risk.”
Mayor Eric Garcetti expressed his support for the plan in a Tuesday press conference.
"We're facing a real threat. The only way we can gain the upper hand is by fighting back," he said.
City leaders expressed the importance of raising vaccination rates now. "We're taking this action because the stakes are so high," Garcetti said.
Garcetti said there has been an "alarming spike" in COVID-19 cases among city workers.
The city has about 50,000 employees. It's unclear how many are vaccinated. The proposed new requirements would have department heads verifying and keeping track of their employees' status. They would submit reports to the city with vaccination details.
Employees who chose not to get vaccinated would be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test every week. The city said the local government will work with labor partners on how the plan will be instituted.
“We need the unvaccinated Angelenos to stop dragging their feet,” said City Council President Nury Martinez before asking, “How can we ask Angelenos to get vaccinated if we’re not doing it ourselves?”
Martinez also said it's difficult to ask residents to get vaccinated when many cops and firefighters aren't doing it.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore said more than half of the department's employees are fully vaccinated.
The directors of the police officers' union released a statement saying they continue to "encourage" members to get vaccinated. They say they are ready to talk about the new policy and want to ensure members "are treated fairly."
L.A. County to also consider plan for vaccination mandate
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors is also considering mandating its employees to get vaccinated or test weekly. The L.A. Daily News reported that more than 100,000 county employees would fall under this plan. The paper quoted Supervisor Sheila Kuehl as voicing her support for the plan.
“I want to indicate that I personally strongly favor requiring vaccinations of all 112,000 of our county workers, with a very very focused exception of any kind. I suppose testing could substitute, but we can talk about it,” she said.
“That is something that the board itself will need to decide, along with the supervisors of those employees.”
Law enforcement has lower vaccination rates than the general public in L.A. County despite being eligible for vaccinations as a frontline worker. A L.A. Times survey found that less than 30 percent of sheriff’s department staff received a vaccine through an employee clinic. Just over 61 percent of L.A. County residents are fully vaccinated.
“I was shocked to hear that our public safety officers at the sheriff's department and the fire department were not 100 percent vaccinated. I don’t get that at all,” Kuehl said to the Daily News.
For the city, officials said they will "aggressively pursue" a vaccine mandate once there's a full authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
Ridley-Thomas added, “Plain and simple, vaccinations are the only way out of this pandemic.”