CNN said on Thursday that it had fired three employees who violated its coronavirus safety protocols by going to the office unvaccinated, one of the first known examples of a major American corporation’s terminating workers for ignoring a workplace vaccination mandate.

CNN had said this year that employees would need to be vaccinated against the virus in order to return to its American offices. The network has been relying on an honor system rather than requiring proof of vaccination status.

“In the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming to the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated,” CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, wrote in an internal memo on Thursday that The New York Times obtained. “Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this.”

Mr. Zucker did not say where the employees worked, what positions they held or how their violations of the vaccine mandate were discovered. CNN declined to comment beyond his memo.

“We expect that in the weeks ahead, showing proof of vaccination may become a formal part” of the process for gaining access to the network’s workplaces, Mr. Zucker added.

Many large companies — including Facebook and Google — have said they will require employees to be vaccinated against the virus in order to return to the office. Some companies, including The Washington Post, have gone further by making vaccination a condition of further employment.

But few corporations have described exactly what kind of consequences would arise for employees who violated the vaccine requirements.

In his memo on Thursday, Mr. Zucker announced that CNN had postponed its formal Sept. 7 return to the office for American employees. CNN has not determined a new date, but Mr. Zucker said sometime in October “seems reasonable at this point.” He wrote that “a little more than a third” of CNN’s American newsroom employees were now regularly working in the office again.

  • Jadzia_Dax [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Text of the Wall Street Journal article on this which is better written:

    CNN President Jeff Zucker told staff Thursday that the network fired three employees who came to work without getting a Covid-19 vaccine, as the company steps up efforts to keep the virus from spreading in its offices.

    In an email to employees Thursday, Mr. Zucker said that the terminated employees violated the company’s honor system, which asked workers to attest that they were vaccinated but didn’t require them to produce documentary evidence of their vaccination.

    “Let me be clear—we have a zero-tolerance policy on this,” Mr. Zucker said. “You need to be vaccinated to come to the office. And you need to be vaccinated to work in the field, with other employees, regardless of whether you enter an office or not.”

    He said showing proof of vaccination may become part of the process of entering CNN buildings.

    CNN had no immediate comment on Mr. Zucker’s email.

    Up to now, workers have been coming into CNN offices on a voluntary basis. The company was targeting Sept. 7 as its official return-to-office date, but Mr. Zucker said the return will now be postponed. He said that, given expert guidance on the spread of the virus, the company is tentatively planning for a return to the office sometime in mid-October, but cautioned that plans could change.

    “Given the uncertainty that exists today, we are reluctant to put a specific date on it,” Mr. Zucker said. “We will evaluate in the coming weeks, and I promise that we will give you at least 30 days notice for any return.”

    “I think it is fair to say that we are all feeling a mix of anticipation, anxiety, frustration, confusion, and exasperation,” Mr. Zucker said. “But we will get there. Continue to take care of yourselves and each other.”