ELMA, N.Y. (WBEN) - On October 25, approximately 200 Moog employees walked out of their job in response to a vaccine mandate that was announced for workers, which came after the federal government in September ordered all federal workers be vaccinated by December 8.
Many Moog projects are contracted to work for the United States government, so they fall under that mandate.
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The group retained attorney Todd Aldinger, and he, along with attorney Ralph Lorigo, sent a letter to Moog’s Board of Directors, urging them to join the employee fight against the mandate.
"A lot of the Moog employees have natural immunity and others are morally or religiously opposed to the vaccine, and it appears that Moog could lose a substantial number of employees, in the hundreds, if they aren't willing to work with their employees and do something about this," said Aldinger.
"We think that the best plaintiff for a lawsuit would be Moog itself, not just the employees," he continued. "The employees will be bringing litigation if Moog doesn't join them, but we would like to work with the company and have them stand up for their employees and fight against this unconstitutional executive order."
As the original mandate was set to take effect December 8, but has since been pushed back another month, Aldinger said they're going to use this fact as part of their litigation strategy.
"That kind of even more undermines this whole posture of the federal government's case," he said. "They're doing this claiming it's an emergency and saying no one's allowed to comment on it or put in competing scientific evidence, but then they voluntarily laid the implementation of this regulation for another month."
In addition, certain employees at Moog are highly specialized in their respective fields, and there may not be many people qualified to fill those positions. Aldinger believes this may offer certain leverage to Moog in a lawsuit that perhaps other entities wouldn't have.
"Moog has real problems if a couple of its uniquely skilled individuals decide they don't want to take the vaccine and they leave," said Aldinger. "That could really hamstring their production, and at the same time, that would hurt the federal government's supply chain more than any conceivable harm that would occur if there was a couple COVID cases throughout the course of the year in the factories."