Seattle employees may be exempt from vaccine mandate, but they still might not keep their job

Seattle city employees who do not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19 are either out of a job or have asked to be exempt from the mayor’s mandate.

Here’s the thing: Even if your request for an exemption is approved, you are still at risk for losing your job.

Workers under the order had to verify their vaccination status by Monday, or make a case for why they can’t be vaccinated for medical or religious reasons. We don’t yet know how many more city employees will ultimately be fired.

About 95% of the more than 11,000 executive city employees were vaccinated as of Thursday night, according to the Mayor’s Office.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan says city employees who haven’t gotten the jab still have time. In fact, every employee who has not yet been vaccinated will be given one last chance to do so and keep their job, she says.

That may apply to those who received an exemption, too.

That’s because some workers whose requests for exemptions were approved will not be accommodated.

What does that mean?

Simply put: It’s a two-step process.

Employees who fall under the city’s Covid vaccination mandate may request an exemption. If approved, the city acknowledges the worker’s reasoning – sincerely held religious beliefs or medical reason – is valid.

If that happens and a worker’s request for an exemption from the mandate is approved, your employer will try to accommodate you with a job that reduces the risk of being infected to others. That job might not be what you were hired to do. It may not even be at the same rate of pay.

It also just might not exist.

If the city determines there is no way to accommodate you while keeping others safe, it's time to hit the job market.

"We cannot promise every employee an accommodation,” Durkan says, noting most city employees did choose to get vaccinated. “We’re doing this for public health and safety.”

So, when a supervisor is trying to make an accommodation, they will first look for a role that does not put the unvaccinated worker into contact with their co-workers or the public.

However, that’s not easy in many cases.

And Durkan says alternatives like submitting negative Covid tests regularly just won’t do the trick – for anyone who is not vaccinated, exempt or not.

“Negative Covid tests have not proven to be effective in trying to do what we’re trying to do here,” she argues.

Testing may have been our best tool earlier in the pandemic, but that was before vaccines were widely available.

“If you test someone for Covid, by the time they test positive, they’ve probably already transmitted it to a number of people,” Durkan said.