Citigroup to lay off unvaccinated U.S. employees

Citigroup, a US-based bank, is set to send employees who have not yet been vaccinated against Govt-19 on unpaid leave by Friday. At the end of the month, they will be fired if they are not exempted for medical or religious reasons. This is clear from an internal note viewed by Reuters on Friday.

The bank, which announced the introduction of a stringent vaccination policy in October, is set to become the first bank to strictly adhere to the vaccination obligation on Wall Street. Despite the wave of contagious omigran variants of the corona virus, the finance department is struggling to figure out how employees can safely return to the office.

Other major Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, have advised unvaccinated employees to work from home, but none have gone so far as to lay off employees. Some other major US companies, including Google and United Airlines, have enacted “no-job, no-work” policies with various austerity measures.

More than 90 percent of Citigroup employees have yet to meet vaccination requirements, and that number is growing rapidly, according to Reuters sources. The bank has previously said it wants to comply with President Joe Biden’s administration’s policy of vaccinating employees working on government contracts. Vaccine duty is controversial in the United States, however; The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that companies with 100 or more employees need the vaccine. Republican representatives from several states and business groups have filed lawsuits against the move.

This article is part of our live blog: Citigroup to lay off unvaccinated U.S. employees