Nearly a dozen Republican lawmakers are expressing their concern about the impending COVID-19 vaccination deadline for Department of Defense contractors.
The members of Congress addressed their concerns in an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden, in which they pleaded for a reversal amid fear that the Dec. 8 deadline will “inevitably compromise national security for decades.”
“Those who adamantly refuse the vaccine will accept termination,” the 11 lawmakers wrote. “We will lose critical experience in skilled labor. We will lose opportunities for mentorship and on-the-job training from veteran craftsmen. In the long-term, we will miss quality control standards. We will face endemic cost overruns and rework as decades of lessons are not passed to the next generation.”
All but one of the lawmakers who signed the letter are members of the House Armed Services Committee. The signers are Reps. Jack Bergman, Jerry Carl, Scott Desjarlais, Vicky Hartzler, Doug Lamborn, Blake Moore, Bill Posey, Mike Rogers, Elise Stefanik, Joe Wilson, and Robert Wittman.
Days later, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes explained that the defense contractor will lose “several thousand” employees who refuse to comply with the mandate.
To date, nearly 90% of the 125,000 company employees are either vaccinated or “in the process of being vaccinated,” he said, adding that there is another 3% of employees who are seeking either a religious or medical exemption and an additional 3% who have said they don’t intend on getting the vaccine.
The lawmakers described the process for an exemption as “arcane and for most, seemingly nonexistent.”
They also said they do “not find this [cost-benefit analysis] to be one that is sound.”
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Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville also sent a letter to the president regarding the same topic earlier this week.
Roughly 40 of 690 employees at United Launch Alliance, a Lockheed Martin and Boeing joint venture that contracts to both NASA and the Pentagon, walked off the job on Monday over the mandate. They vowed to continue protesting in the days leading up to the deadline to be vaccinated.
