Pittsburgh won't enforce vaccine requirements for cops, firefighters

[left-of-center2012]

The day before an executive order requiring vaccines against COVID-19 for firefighters and police officers was set to go into effect, the Department of Public Safety said it would not yet enforce the mandate. “The City will not take any disciplinary action this week while there is an active grievance,” a spokesperson for the department said. “We are meeting and working cooperatively with the unions.”

The delay in enforcement applies only to firefighters and police officers, which both had unions file grievances against the mandate. Other city employees will still need to comply with the order starting Wednesday, said Dan Gilman, the mayor’s chief of staff.

Mayor Bill Peduto issued an executive order in November requiring vaccines for all city employees, in order to prevent transmission and limit COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, according to the mayor’s office. The president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 1 said at the time the union viewed the unilateral mandate a violation of Pennsylvania labor laws. “They didn’t bargain with us, they issued the order,” union president Robert Swartzwelder told the Post-Gazette in November. “This is a mandatory change of the working conditions, and if you impose a mandatory change you have to bargain over it.”

Under the mandate, any city employee who failed to comply with the order or was not granted an exemption “will be subject to employment actions, including unpaid administrative leave and/or discipline up to and including termination, until they show proof of vaccination,” the order read. Mr. Swartzwelder said Tuesday the police union was still working through its grievance process, but that he had been “satisfied to date with the city’s efforts to follow the contract.”

https://www.post-gazette.com/local/2021/12/21/Pittsburgh-department-of-public-safety-wont-enforce-vaccine-mandate-firefighters-police-union/stories/202112210114