100s Of GE Workers Walk Off The Job Over Vaccine Mandates; Main Stream Media Chooses To Cover A Dozen Workers Walk Off (Ohio: restaurant, safety)

[sheerbliss]

Originally Posted by roodd279

GE has over 200 THOUSAND employees, world-wide.


If several hundred - indeed, several THOUSAND - walked out and quit - it would hardly dent their bottom line or affect anything, except maybe very locally.


Using raw numbers for this type of thing is silly. What PERCENTAGE of GE Employees refuse to get the vaccine? For GE and ALL companies - that number is getting smaller and smaller.

If enough employees in a particular type of job leave, which is what's happening--yes, it can cause a bottleneck, especially when the employee won't easily be replaced.

Originally Posted by roodd279

For our tiny company here - we've lost weeks - and weeks - and weeks - of production as people sick with COVID - but mainly LIVING WITH SOMEONE with Covid - must take two weeks off - per OSHA. That's the policy. It hasn't changed in 18 months. If the trade of is - 1% of our people QUIT while the rest get vaccinated - we will absolutely tolerate that. We've lost far more than 1% to COVID in 2021.


So has GE. This itty bitty teeny tiny "walk-out" will do nothing to change their policy - because they are the mercy of OSHA, just like we are. Whine all ya want - but it will change nothing. We've proven that for a year now.

Looking at the shortages, shut-downs, delays, rapidly rising wages and sign-on bonuses, the "1% quitting" I keep hearing about beggars belief. Unlike people who've had to quarantine for a few weeks, people who quit over mandates aren't going back to the jobs they left.

A company policy to fire unvaccinated people with superior natural immunity (i.e., they recovered from COVID) doesn't make any sense.

[Pahn]

Originally Posted by sheerbliss

A company policy to fire unvaccinated people with superior natural immunity (i.e., they recovered from COVID) doesn't make any sense.

These people with "superior natural immunity" are also at greater risk of just dying of blood clots and heart failure, not to mention any long-term effects.

Also, that assumes that unvaccinated people have already had COVID. What about the unvaccinated that haven't yet had it? Easier to fire them than to deal with weeks of lost time, and who knows what sort of ticking time bomb once they recover.

[wjj]

Originally Posted by MSchemist80

It is just very frustrating. One of the greatest accomplishments last century was eradicating Polio and Smallpox. Back then people just took the freaking vaccine instead of spreading rumors on social media that it was made with aborted fetal stem cells or causes everything from birth defects to lost socks in the laundry.

I suggest you go back and do some research. The polio vaccine was not readily accepted in the 1950s and early 1960s. There were many set backs and adverse reactions due to production flaws. It took many, many years before a large majority of the population was vaccinated. I hate to admit it, but I was there when this was going on and remember the concerns of my parents and my friend's parents at the time. The Covid vaccine has been far more accepted now than the polio vaccine was back then. Having the vaccine released and having over half the population fully vaccinated in less than a year? That never happened with the polio vaccine.

[wjj]

Originally Posted by roodd279

GE has over 200 THOUSAND employees, world-wide.


If several hundred - indeed, several THOUSAND - walked out and quit - it would hardly dent their bottom line or affect anything, except maybe very locally.


Using raw numbers for this type of thing is silly. What PERCENTAGE of GE Employees refuse to get the vaccine? For GE and ALL companies - that number is getting smaller and smaller.



For our tiny company here - we've lost weeks - and weeks - and weeks - of production as people sick with COVID - but mainly LIVING WITH SOMEONE with Covid - must take two weeks off - per OSHA. That's the policy. It hasn't changed in 18 months. If the trade of is - 1% of our people QUIT while the rest get vaccinated - we will absolutely tolerate that. We've lost far more than 1% to COVID in 2021.


So has GE. This itty bitty teeny tiny "walk-out" will do nothing to change their policy - because they are the mercy of OSHA, just like we are. Whine all ya want - but it will change nothing. We've proven that for a year now.

That is a very short sighted view. First, GE has well under 200K employees now and most are not in the US. And these employees are not fungible. They are highly skilled and credentialed and in some cases have government clearance in their fields and are not interchangeable. So if a couple hundred employees at GE Aviation in Ohio walk away, that shuts the place down. Employees at GE Healthcare in Wisconsin don't know how to build jet engines (commercial or military). Neither do the folks at GE Oil & Gas or GE Digital. If people walk out at the North Carolina plant building turbines for nuclear power plants, they can't be easily replaced. People installing and maintaining turbines in power plants can't do R&D for new diagnostic medical devices at GE Healthcare.


Back in the old days when GE made light bulbs and appliances, you might be able to move factory workers around. Not today. There is a reason that almost two months after Biden's press conference that OSHA has not issued their emergency order. Big business has let it be known that they will have to shut down or scale way back due to lack of employees. Notice how the airlines are now back-tracking on firing unvaxed employees or putting them on unpaid leave? What's the government going to do? Send mail by boat? Have all government employees (including the military) drive everywhere? What if the Ohio plant that makes military jet engines has to shut down? What will the government do? Send in the national guard to build engines? Ground the military? These companies and employees are the ones holding the cards right now. Just a matter of who blinks first.

[roodd279]

Disagree - because of the % of workers.
I DO agree that if ALL the "special skills" people walked out - they'd be in trouble. But a random survey of those who DID walk out shows the same pattern at GE as with all companies - the highly skilled folks mainly trust the vaccine.


Sorry - that's just the odds of it, informal survey. Our place? 2% of engineers remain unvaccinated - while 50% of of manufacturing is unvaccinated. They hold zero cards. The engineers can, if pushed, assemble things - but the assemblers cannot design things. Way of the world. Cruel yes - but statistically relevant.


I HATE the new possible OSHA policy mandating vaccines - really, that's bunk - for all the reasons you've stated. But walking out to AVOID vaccines is doing nothing. Really.


I work closely with GE regularly - I don't need an examination of their inner and outer workings - and I can tell ya, like I said - except for very locally, a small percent of folks leaving is much less pain than a random selection of staff missing 3 to 6 six weeks of work every month or two because their spouse / kid / parent has COVID. It sucks. If you are NOT vaccinated - you MUST isolate or quarantine, depending, and it can (and does) happen to the same person over and over again. You MUST stay home from work for at least 10 days after your last contact with a contagious person - and THAT person - if it's your kid - is contagious for (AT LEAST) 14 days. So - your kid sick? 24 days off. Just like that.

We've seen it over and over again. Yet they prefer to be off work - unpaid - repeatedly - for 24 days - rather than get vaccinated.



Does this describe the highly skilled irreplaceable workers at GE -or anywhere else? Argue if you must - but statistically - nope.

[wjj]

Originally Posted by roodd279

Disagree - because of the % of workers.
I DO agree that if ALL the "special skills" people walked out - they'd be in trouble. But a random survey of those who DID walk out shows the same pattern at GE as with all companies - the highly skilled folks mainly trust the vaccine.


Sorry - that's just the odds of it, informal survey. Our place? 2% of engineers remain unvaccinated - while 50% of of manufacturing is unvaccinated. They hold zero cards. The engineers can, if pushed, assemble things - but the assemblers cannot design things. Way of the world. Cruel yes - but statistically relevant.


I HATE the new possible OSHA policy mandating vaccines - really, that's bunk - for all the reasons you've stated. But walking out to AVOID vaccines is doing nothing. Really.


I work closely with GE regularly - I don't need an examination of their inner and outer workings - and I can tell ya, like I said - except for very locally, a small percent of folks leaving is much less pain than a random selection of staff missing 3 to 6 six weeks of work every month or two because their spouse / kid / parent has COVID. It sucks. If you are NOT vaccinated - you MUST isolate or quarantine, depending, and it can (and does) happen to the same person over and over again. You MUST stay home from work for at least 10 days after your last contact with a contagious person - and THAT person - if it's your kid - is contagious for (AT LEAST) 14 days. So - your kid sick? 24 days off. Just like that.

We've seen it over and over again. Yet they prefer to be off work - unpaid - repeatedly - for 24 days - rather than get vaccinated.



Does this describe the highly skilled irreplaceable workers at GE -or anywhere else? Argue if you must - but statistically - nope.

Statistically? Your informal survey of your company? Really?

[Seguinite]

Originally Posted by Justabystander

The unvaccinated are selfish and yes, preventing covid from disappearing and keeping the country from finally fully recovering, Yes, it is their fault, absolutely.

That is utter and complete BS. It's been made abundantly clear in the past several months that vaccinations don't prevent you from getting COVID, and that vaccinated folks can spread it just as well as anyone. So the whole 'blame it on the unvaccinated folks' is getting old.

With the survival rate being what it is, we should've never shut anything down to begin with and just let nature run the course.

[OldOzarkLady]

Originally Posted by Justabystander

The unvaccinated are selfish and yes, preventing covid from disappearing and keeping the country from finally fully recovering, Yes, it is their fault, absolutely.

I agree with getting vaccinated. Not sure those against vaccine are selfish, they seem to have a different thought process. I don't understand it, but have to respect it

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Seguinite

That is utter and complete BS. It's been made abundantly clear in the past several months that vaccinations don't prevent you from getting COVID, and that vaccinated folks can spread it just as well as anyone. So the whole 'blame it on the unvaccinated folks' is getting old.

With the survival rate being what it is, we should've never shut anything down to begin with and just let nature run the course.

That's not quite accurate--the vaccines do prevent you from getting COVID in terms of on average reducing the likelihood and severity, they just don't guarantee 100% protection. They also don't guarantee you can't transmit it, but they do reduce the likelihood so saying that you can spread it just *as well as* anyone else is also inaccurate.

Possibly the smartest thing would have been for there to be faster lockdowns, especially when they were more localized, but that didn't happen, so there was a kind of awkward stalling period where things were stuck on whether or not pandora's box could be closed. We, not just the US, but globally, sort of blew that though at least we have developed vaccines fairly rapidly which mitigate things.

Regardless, I don't think GE's going to hurt much from this, and it's a bit hard to understand why a walk-off in a plant in Ohio is on the Illinois forum. Aren't most of GE's jobs in Illinois more office and R&D with little in manufacturing in Illinois?

[Justabystander]

Originally Posted by Sunbiz1

Because we were led to believe this was the case last Spring.
The whole reason I took the vaccine was to protect those I care about, then months later I felt duped into it.

Duped? You have got to be kidding, right?