Baker offers to reinstate some state workers fired under COVID-19 vaccine mandate
Massachusetts officials have begun offering to reinstate some workers who lost their jobs after Governor Charlie Baker mandated that all executive branch employees be inoculated against COVID-19, reversing course for some who had refused to get vaccinated.
State officials did not say Tuesday how many employees they had fired or who quit have been offered their jobs back. A spokeswoman for Baker said the administration made offers for a “small number of positions,” and some labor officials described having a relatively slim share of employees who lost their jobs receive offer letters.
More than 1,000 employees were fired or quit after declining to get vaccinated against COVID-19, state officials said in January. At the time, Baker officials said they made up a fraction of the state’s workforce, and that more than 97 percent of the 41,000-plus executive branch employees subject to the vaccine requirement were in compliance.
Baker, speaking to reporters Tuesday, indicated that the state made offers to those who previously sought a medical or religious exemption but had been denied. State officials told WBUR in February that it approved just 256 of more than 2,300 exemption requests.
“There’s been a process here for dealing with those who sought exemptions, and there are a small number of people who, based on continued reviews of those exemption requests, we believe we have solutions for. We want to talk to them,” Baker said following an unrelated event at Hanscom Air Force Base.
“Part of the exemption process depends to some extent on medical issues, on religious issues. And it also depends on the work you do,” he added. “There’s a small number of people that we want to talk to because we think we may have an answer for them.”
Officials from one labor group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss individual requests, estimated that about 10 percent of those who fell under their union and were fired or quit have received offer letters. They said the offers appear to be an attempt to plug worker shortages across an array of departments or agencies.
“There’s higher turnover, more people leaving,” one official said. “It’s harder for them to recruit people in this job market.”
According to a copy of a reinstatement letter shared with the Globe, the administration cited guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in making the offer. The letter said that “high levels of immunity and availability of effective COVID-19 prevention and management tools have reduced the risk” of significant illness or death.
The Baker administration did not say why it chose to make the reinstatement offers now, other than it has “recently been able to accommodate a small number of positions who previously were not accommodated under the vaccine requirement.”
“These employees have been offered back their positions, and the administration does not anticipate more letters going out for additional positions,” said Anisha Chakrabarti, a Baker spokeswoman.
Chakrabarti said Baker, who is not seeking reelection and will leave office in January, does not have plans to “make updates” to his vaccine guidance “at this time.”
Baker had previously defended his decision to mandate that state workers under him, including State Police, be vaccinated. Last fall, he lamented about not having a “magic combination” to persuade holdouts to get inoculated.
“I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I expect them, for themselves and their families, and for the people they come in contact with every single day, to get a safe and effective vaccine,” Baker said at the time.
Geoff Diehl, the Republican nominee for governor, has routinely railed against Baker’s vaccine requirements, promising to both undo them if elected and fire those who had thought it was a “good idea.” Attorney General Maura Healey, the Democratic nominee, supports Baker’s decision, saying last year that it was both legal and the “right move.”
In a statement Tuesday, Diehl cheered reports of workers as the Department of Transportation being among those to receive reinstatement offers.
“However,” the Whitman Republican said, “this doesn’t excuse the fact that these terminations were wrong in the first place and unjustifiably displaced these workers for many months. It also overlooks the fact that there are many other people, including especially first responders, who are still out of work due to these mandates.”
Unions representing State Police troopers and prison workers had both unsuccessfully sought to stop Baker’s mandate.
The union that represents 1,800 State Police troopers filed a lawsuit in September 2021 that asked a judge to delay the mandate to give the troopers’ union time to bargain. A judge rejected the motion a week later.
The following week, the union representing about 4,000 Massachusetts prison guards also sued to postpone Baker’s mandate, but a federal judge in US District Court in Boston ruled against them and allowed the vaccine requirement to move forward.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mattpstout.
