Tommy Tuberville Says Defense Contractor Vaccine Mandate 'Threatens Our National Security'
Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville sent a letter to President Joe Biden calling on him to "to remove—or, at a minimum, delay and clarify" the administration's executive order requiring defense contractors to mandate that their workers receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
On September 9, the administration ordered that private companies and universities that receive funds to fulfill contracts issued by the Department of Defense instruct their workers take the shot before December 8. Employees who do not get the jab could lose their jobs.
Tuberville said that the mandate could result in a number of firms losing a significant sum of workers. He fears that this could result in some of these contractors, particularly smaller ones, being forced to stall their operations, something he believes could spark national security concerns.
"I share your desire to see our country through the COVID-19 pandemic as quickly as possible, and, I—like you—have elected to take the vaccine," Tuberville wrote. "But your administration's mandate is short-sighted, ill-conceived, and threatens our national security,"
Drawing on his home state of Alabama as an example, Tuberville wrote that firms with fewer than 100 workers, like the ones in Alabama, could face a skilled worker shortage as a result of his predicted exodus. With these firms unable to complete their objectives, Tuberville said the country "is at risk."
Beyond this concern, he said the order "inappropriately removes doctors" from the health care decision making process for Americans impacted by the mandate. This, he said, would force people to make a decision between "taking a novel vaccine they do not want or continuing to support our men and women in uniform," something he called "false and unnecessary."
In addition to this, Tuberville criticized the order's framework that he said offers the ability for bureaucratic entities to institute changes to compliance requirements with "little or no notice." Along with this issue, he said the order also faces issues in its "broad" language which he said, in effect, could require some university employees to fall under the mandate even if they're not involved in contracting activities.
Ultimately, Tuberville believed that because the mandate could lead some workers to leave their jobs that it does not fulfill its stated intention to "decrease worker absences, reduce labor costs, and improve efficiency." In place of this mandate, he suggested a different path forward:
"Rather than the government dictates, we should pursue a holistic strategy that emphasizes commonsense workplace safety policies, regular COVID-19 testing, vaccines for people who want them, easy to access antibody treatments, and the continued evaluation and approval of new pharmaceutical treatments," Tuberville wrote. "Mandates are not the answer; frank conversations between doctors and patients are."
