SAN JOSE — After the looming prospect of more than 100 police officers heading out the door over a stricter vaccine mandate that began today, San Jose’s police union has reached an agreement with the city to gives officers the option to test twice weekly if they don’t want to get a COVID-19 vaccination shot.
San Jose officials, in turn, are extending that same option to all city employees who are not yet in compliance with its employee vaccination mandate, indicating that the city is taking a more lenient approach than it originally led on.
“San Jose doesn’t want to push anyone out of their employment with the city, but we have a responsibility to continue to deliver critical city services, safely, to our residents,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement. “We know new variants are emerging, which only furthers the need to ensure we have a vaccinated workforce. Our ability to provide essential services to our community without increased risk of interruptions from exposures depends on it.”
Police officers and city employees across all departments will then be given a one-week ‘grace period’ to make a vaccination appointment or request a medical or religious exemption. Those who still do not want to get vaccinated and have not been granted an exemption will then have the option to submit a negative COVID-19 test twice a week — on their own time and at their own expense.
Employees who choose to go that route, however, will have to serve the equivalent of a week-long suspension. The city said that it will “consider further action,” which could include termination, for those that remain unvaccinated after December 31.
According to the agreement, any officer who still refuses to comply with any of these avenues will be fast-tracked to termination proceedings.
The carveout, minus the suspension requirement, is similar to the accommodation that the city had previously offered to employees who were granted medical and religious exemptions to the vaccination mandate. But until late Thursday, the city had not indicated that there would be a testing alternative for city employees lacking an exemption.
The agreement between the police union and the city effectively makes seeking an exemption moot provided that any affected officers are willing to give up a week of pay. Sources in the police department told this news organization that the SJPD administration had gotten a wave of last-minute religious exemption applications prior to the new deal being reached.
The city said that it is evaluating requests for religious and medical exemptions on a “case-by-case basis.” As of late Thursday, the city had received about 350 exemption requests and had only denied 8 of those.
Overall, about 92% of 7,000 on-duty San Jose employees had submitted proof of vaccination as of Friday. Within the city’s police department, about 86% of the 1,800 on-duty police employees have submitted proof of vaccination, according to the city.
Before the new deal was reached, the police union was putting heavy political pressure on the city by saying publicly that as many as 140 officers who as of last week had not submitted vaccination proof might leave the department, imperiling baseline police operations. The union’s efforts to avoid mandatory vaccinations for its officers marked a strategic split from other large unions in the city that either supported compliance or remained neutral, though the POA had strong company with other public-safety unions throughout the state.
But the city did not budge, at least publicly, on its vaccination requirement or its deadline until Thursday.
In a statement after the test-out option was agreed on, the union said it “recognized the dire consequences of potentially losing a significant amount of officers and worked with the city to find a solution that protects both the health and the safety of our members and the residents we serve.”
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