Employees at a General Electric plant in Greenville, South Carolina, staged a walkout on Thursday in protest of their company's vaccine mandate for employees ahead of an early December deadline by which employees must either be vaccinated or granted an exemption on medical or religious grounds to remain employed.
According to local outlet Greenville News, GE employees were joined by others during the protest that included more than 100 people, a mix of GE workers and members of the community who wished to show their support. Some held up signs bearing messages such as "I stand for medical freedom," "coercion is not consent," and "no jab, no job = tyranny."
While many employees who walked off the job were unwilling to be interviewed, two spoke with The State, who expressed frustration after they continued working throughout the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. "We worked as an essential employee through the entire COVID pandemic," one said. "We were required to be here or lose our job. Now you're requiring me to take it to stay here."
General Electric employees are protesting vaccine mandates in Greenville County.https://t.co/5sroOBAgHg
— WSPA 7News (@WSPA7) October 21, 2021
The company's mandate comes as President Biden's administration works on expanding its vaccine requirements for companies that do business with the federal government to eventually apply to all companies with more than 100 employees. Some of the protestors walking off the job made it clear they weren't protesting GE, but instead the mandate being forced on them.
"What we need is Gov. (Henry) McMaster to do what he said he was going to do — which is stand up against the federal mandate," one protestor told the Greenville News.
Another employee told the local Fox affiliate "that he worked for GE for 35 years and was there to support the engineers who have been working from home for 18 months and could lose their jobs because they don’t want to give the company their medical information."
The Greenville County Republican Party — a group that's been staging weekly protests against Biden's vaccine mandate — said in a statement that they "stand in solidarity with GE Power employees" and called out Republican South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster for "not consistently standing up for the workers" who choose not to get vaccinated.
For its part, General Electric responded to the walk out by pledging "All GE U.S. employees will be fully vaccinated or receive a medical or religious accommodation by December 8th as required in the order.”
Recent days have seen General Electric employees stage similar walkouts at other plants, including one in Lafayette, Indiana. Employees there said the mandate "feels blindsiding, you know like we are blindsided, and it feels like we are getting a little bit stabbed in the back" and questioned the exemption process. "I have a really big problem with somebody telling us if our religious beliefs are sincere or not."
The paperwork for a religious exemption "is 6 pages long and asks about medical history along with having the employee agree to not take over-the-counter medications," Lafayette affiliate WLFI reported.