31 employees at PNNL quit, retire or are fired over COVID vaccine mandate

Some 94% of staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland are fully or partially vaccinated against COVID-19 after a mandate took effect on Monday.

It has lost 31 employees, or less than 1 % of its workforce, to retirement, resignation or termination because of the requirement to be vaccinated or have an exemption approved.

Battelle, the Department of Energy contractor for the national lab, issued the vaccination order for 5,300 staff members, most of them employed in the Tri-Cities, in September.

The national lab is the largest single employer in the Tri-Cities, but the 11,000 employees of DOE and various contractors at the Hanford nuclear reservation, also face deadlines to be vaccinated or have exemptions approved.

The mandate for DOE employees at Hanford takes effect Monday, Nov. 22, unless the deadline is moved. The mandate for DOE contractor employees likely will be extended to January.

In Benton County 55% of all residents are fully or partially vaccinated against COVID-19 and in Franklin County 50% are. The majority of Hanford nuclear reservation and PNNL employees live in those two counties.

As of the Monday deadline at PNNL, 311 employees had submitted a medical or religious exemption, with about 84% of those approved for a review of temporary accommodations.

All 42 who requested a medical exemption and submitted a doctor’s note were approved. They included some people who had a previous infection with the coronavirus.

Most of the rejected requests cited reasons that did not meet the legal threshold for a religious exemption and therefore did not qualify, according to PNNL.

“We understand that this requirement has evoked strong emotions — for and against — among some staff,” said laboratory director Steven Ashby in a memo to staff on Tuesday. “We also know that it has caused anxiety for many who wrestled with a difficult decision as well as colleagues who were concerned for them.”

The vaccine mandate was a difficult decision for leadership at PNNL, he said.

But it was implemented following the advice available from the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and public health experts, he said.

COVID vaccine exemptions

Each exemption request was considered individually and thoughtfully, he said, which took more time than expected.

Most of the workers with approved exemptions will continue to work remotely and to have a negative COVID-19 test when they return to the main Richland PNNL campus or smaller satellite campuses elsewhere, even for a brief time.

However, in some cases employees with exemptions are being required to temporarily relocate to another work space or project.

“And in a handful of cases, the only acceptable accommodation was unpaid leave,” Ashby said.

The accommodations for employees with exemptions are temporary and will be reassessed as circumstances change, he said.

That could include changes as PNNL moves to more normal operations with more staff on-site, making it more difficult to maintain social distance among employees.

“As more Americans get vaccinated, we are seeing cases drop in some parts of the country, including the Tri-Cities. Hospitalizations and deaths also are declining,” Ashby said.

This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 4:13 PM.