A small but boisterous group of Boston first responders has come up with a way to protest Boston's impending vaccination requirement: Everybody files for exemptions the night before the mandate goes into effect, then when the city moves to terminate them, claim their vacation time so the city still has to pay them while adjudicating their claims - and forcing the city to hire expensive replacements.
The group, Boston First Responders United, sent out details of its plan for mass religious exemptions last night to the roughly 350 people on its mailing list. By contrast, Boston has roughly 2,100 police officers, 1,600 firefighters and 400 EMTs and paramedics.
Leaders of the two main unions who represent first-responder rank and file have been battling the city over the imposition of a vaccine mandate as a collective-bargaining issue: If the city wants to require vaccinations, they have to bargain with the unions to give up something in return.
But this new group says screw that, they don't want shots, period, because they claim vaccines violate their God-given rights to preserve their holy immune systems and, they claim, to protect pregnant first responders and others with what they say are legitimate health reasons not to get shots that can reduce the spread of a deadly virus. They vow to fight what they call tyrannical plans by politicians to deprive them of their freedom, their jobs and even their cars.
Some members have also used the city 311 system to attack union leaders, in particular Ed Kelly, formerly head of the Boston firefighters union, but now president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
In their plans, leaders of Boston First Responders United provide a sample statement first responders can use to demand a religious exemption at 10:45 p.m. on Jan. 14 - which is when the group says everybody should file their demands for exemptions, just before the start of the new city shot requirement on Jan. 15:
I am notifying you that I am exempt from this activity based on my sincerely held religious beliefs. God created me with an immune system and I will not alter his design. It is a sin against my God-given conscience to allow unwanted intrusions into my body which is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
That statement was written by Peggy Hall, an Orange County, CA anti-mask activist who now fights vaccines, in part by selling cards that claim bearers have a right under federal law to ignore local mask mandates, which they do not.
Under the vaccination mandate announced by Mayor Wu, city workers will have to show proof they have gotten at least one shot by Jan. 15, and a second by Feb. 15, if they don't get the one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Failure to do so can mean being placed on unpaid leave. Wu said today that roughly 90% of city workers have already gotten their shots.
When the state announced a similar mandate earlier this year, the union representing state troopers claimed many would fight rather than get a shot. To date, after the union lost in court, one state trooper has been terminated, although several dozen more are awaiting disciplinary action.
The first-responder group says they are ready to grind out the system through delay:
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Comments
Good benefits packages
By brianjdamico
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 5:55pm
are not a terrible thing. Why should I resent someone for having a better contract than I do? I may be a little jealous at times, but if I assume they are good at their job, like I'd hope they assume of me and my job, then I can't fault them for their job giving them a better deal than mine gives me. Especially considering at least some of their jobs are ones I would not want to do myself.
I don't know how your time off works, but in my job, I do accrue my days off on a monthly basis, but they carry over into the next fiscal year before they expire at the start of the following FY. By balancing how I use my time off each year, I rarely leave any days on the table when they expire but I also start the next FY with a full year's worth of earned vacation time.
Yes
By perruptor
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 7:54am
Pretty much every other employer is committed to exploiting their workers to the maximum extent they can get away with. Not having unions allows that extent to be much greater, which is why they always fight so hard to prevent their workers from organizing. There's a spectrum, of course, from Amazon to Aaron Feuerstein's Malden Mills, but the vast majority of corporate employers will happily sacrifice workers for profits.
um
By cinnamngrl
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 9:41am
I work for the government and I am unionized. My time is paid out by hours worked. I actually earn almost a full day every 2 weeks (26 years). Earning time over the course of the year is hardly an onerous requirement. My biggest problem is carrying too much time and burning it.
I don't see how this plan will work. I cannot take 3 sick days in a row without documentation. they will also be suspended, so it would be normal to use time if the union is disputing it. You get the days back if you win the dispute. However even if they get permission to not vaccinate, they will lose the days. If you choose to file an exemption without enough time to determine it, you have to use time ( or go off the books, which is bad). I can easily see a judge or arbiter saying ok exemption but no time reimbursement.
um
By cinnamngrl
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 9:41am
*
Jealous much?
By tblade
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 6:17pm
Maybe the PTO system in the US is generally a trash fire across the board and other employers should more like the city so small-minded people aren’t bitter about people who have better work conditions then they do. Instead of griping about it, demand better PTO from your employer.
Government employment
By anon
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 8:33pm
Government employment policies like this are stupid all around. Besides the gift to retirees (assuming they're able to retire just after the lump sum date), there are all kinds of gotchas with lump sum vacation policies, like when people who were hired late in the year earn vacation on their hire anniversary and have very little time to use it before it expires on December 31, or people getting switched to a role on a different vacation plan just before the lump sum date and losing a year of accrual.
Either we have to come up
By anon
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 6:27pm
Either we have to come up with a better vaccine or I'm starting to wonder if the people who haven't got infected by these radical viruses by now are superhumans. I'm fully vaxed, got flu shot, wear mask and have just been diagnosed by my doctor at MGH with Covid. I am a healthy person in my early 50s. Symptoms are extremely sore throat, headache and cough. I ltake the Orange Line to work every day to work. Out for 5 days.
Now imagine ...
By adamg
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 7:22pm
What your symptoms might have been without the vaccine's protection - and whether there would be a bed in an ICU for you.
Yes Adam I do realize that.
By anon
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 7:28pm
Yes Adam I do realize that. But I still think we must need a new vaccine. This monster alien species is winning and laughing at our current vaccine . It too is trying to survive just like we are. But it's like the flea and th cockroach. It survives all.
You described your own symptoms above
By brianjdamico
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 8:33pm
and I hope they get no worse than they are. But those are your symptoms as a fully vaccinated person. Aren’t your symptoms at this point, having been fully vaccinated with our current vaccines, now similar to other mild respiratory infections for which we we don’t have a vaccine to fight?
If the need for a new vaccine becomes apparent, surely the great scientists and medical researchers that brought us safe and effective vaccines in record time already can and will bring us more effective and equally or even safer new vaccines.
Vaccines were never tested for quelling transmission
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 9:13pm
That would not be possible without violating a fuckton of ethics rules because it would involve intentional exposure with a deadly disease, with some of the exposed having no protection (controls).
Vaccines were tested for preventing severe illness and death, with a threshold of around 65% effectiveness at doing that. Pfizer and Moderna kicked ass at closer to 90%.
And they still do this very well if you look at the numbers of hospitalized and deceased patients that are and are not vaccinated. Vaccines aren't meant to prevent you from being infected - they are meant to keep you alive and unmaimed.
That they appear to prevent infection and quell transmission at all, once the population data came in from the wild, is just bonus benefits.
I hope you feel better soon!
Yes, we could use better
By Vicki
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 10:05pm
Yes, we could use better vaccines. There are researchers working on that, and testing some, now.
In the meantime, yes I'd like a vaccine that would stop me from getting sick. But I'm very glad of the one I got, which may have saved my life. What I got, post-vaccination, was: the worst cold I've had in my life, but I didn't die, wasn't hospitalized, and don't have long covid.
Dumb rhetoric
By Doug1001
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 10:58am
No vax, I got Covid on Monday. Minor fever, minor body aches, minor/infrequent cough... it’s mostly gone.
I didn’t have to inject experimental technology to teach my body how to make spike proteins...i’m a medical miracle!
The rhetoric in the comments section never disappoints me <3
Cool story, bro.
By tblade
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 12:18pm
The virology equivalent of “I drove home drunk and only got a few bumps and scrapes on my car” is not the flex that you think it is.
Flex?
By Doug1001
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 12:42am
Your comparison is embarrassing, but people really use the term “flex” still?
I’ll tell you something... calling “breakthrough cases” aka vaccine failure “rare” isn’t the flex you think it is either.
Your shots suck and there is no proof that everyone winds up in the ICU without them. That’s even dumber than your comparison.
Oh, Happy New Year also.
"flex"
By lbb
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 11:44am
Everything you've had to say on this site is embarrassing. It's like watching someone pontificate while they've got spinach on their teeth.
Good work here...
By Doug1001
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 9:06pm
You still believe that these shots stop the spread and mandates accomplish something....and you’re embarrassed for me?
Projecting once again.... you’re doing real well though - you always do.
You are an outright liar.
By tblade
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 5:48pm
GFY.
Which part?
By Doug1001
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 9:07pm
Be specific... Happy New Year... sending hugs <3
I have to ask you....
By Doug1001
Tue, 01/04/2022 - 12:14am
What proof do you have that people who didn’t receive “the vaccine’s protection” experience awful symptoms and wind up in the ICU?
Don’t you always cite “sources” for things?
What does this data look like or what went into your thought process typing this?
This is really an amazing comment...
Where are you looking?
By perruptor
Tue, 01/04/2022 - 8:39am
It's everywhere:
Maybe if you read something other than your favored antivax sources, you wouldn't have to ask us for this kind of widespread knowledge.
God help me....
By Doug1001
Tue, 01/04/2022 - 12:15pm
“ I don’t remember asking you a god damn thing”
Define unvaccinated for me. Forget it, I’ll do it. See if you can follow this.
In a normal world, we would have unvaxxed (0 shots), partially vaxxed (1 shot, 2 shots up to 13 days after 2nd), and fully vaxxed (2 shots, 14 days after 2nd).
To mislead brilliant folks like yourself, anyone that is not fully vaxxed as defined above is called unvaxxed.
It’s disingenuous, but it helps people like you go to bat for the establishment and defend ridiculous positions. Unvaxxed means 0 needles, period.
So, what’s the percentage of recoveries with no hospitals or using horse dewormer and vitamins?
Back to my question to Adam - it’s a ridiculous comment and I want to know why he made it...
This board’s owner’s
By anon
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 6:53pm
Arrogance in his point of view for the past 18 months is embarrassing to any reasonable thinking person, and has blown up this board from being a pleasant look into under-reported stories to now being a wasteland of hysterical self-absorbed fools.
If you are not pointing out the new totalitarian Nazis in our midst, you must be one of them, and after all, you know what we’ve done to all the surviving Nazis over the past 75 years, don’t you?
The Nazis are doing a great job exposing themselves
By adamg
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 7:24pm
And show little hesitancy to try to post their views online. Wouldn't you agree, mein herr?
I'm beginning to think that Slashdot was right...
By FlyingToaster
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 7:33pm
... when they named their un-logged-in posts' authors "Anonymous Coward".
Why does anyone care if posters are anonymous or not??
By Lee
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 10:21pm
Does your login name identify you any better than anon?
Mine does
By brianjdamico
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 10:30pm
but I understand why many would choose to not use their name. Regardless, having some identifiable name assigned to your posts here does add value to the entirety of your comment history.
Like in how I responded to Will on this very story, since I knew it was him rather than some unknown anon, I knew I was replying to someone who has made their strong feelings about government employees en masse known to us here. I wrote the reply I did, because I knew enough about who I was replying to, but also may have not responded at all if it was some unknown anon replying to my comment.
I'm losing my train of thought here, but pseudonymity and anonymity are different, as evidenced by the number of books that publishers will gladly sell under author's pen names, whereas you don't see a whole lot of commercially published anonymous books out there.
Absolutely!
By Don't Panic
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 1:38am
Some of these usernames are know across message boards on all types of subjects. One of the worst things about using them is that someone can always hijack yours depending on when you became interested in the subject being discussed. Or just register your preferred username then never even bothering to post. What were we talking about again? I seem to have wandered way off topic.
Not anonymous
By SamWack
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 8:50am
My position is that I am not anonymous, but pseudonymous. This means that a visitor to the site who is sick of my bullshit can easily tune it out, but can't burn my house down. This has the undesirable consequence that it gives me more license to say things that would make someone want to burn my house down, but some people will burn your house down if you make a sarcastic remark about a band they like, or stand up courageously against the inclusion of cream in a recipe for spaghetti carbonara.
Good God
By jmeltzer
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 8:14pm
who'd want to put cream in spaghetti carbonara?
(Martha Stewart, apparently)
And yet ...
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 9:10pm
You are still reading?
You don't have to do that - unless there's a boot on your neck or something.
Rich, oh so rich
By Daan
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 2:53pm
An anonymous commenter calling a Jewish man a NAZI. Whew.
Anon: Do you believe that Martin Luther King was a Klansman in disguise; a man who was trying to push non-dark skinned racists even further into their cesspool of hatred?
Or do you believe that Martin Luther was actually a Catholic fellow who was looking for a way to become Pope, by some peculiar reverse psychology?
Anon: Read Jean Genet's Querelle to learn just how rich your comment is.
Holy Immune Systems? so does
By anon42
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 7:04pm
Holy Immune Systems? so does that mean that they sue every virus they catch for f--king with their immune system? seriously, get with it or change jobs, speaking as a health care worker.
Oh, FFS
By FlyingToaster
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 7:30pm
Lots of fake-religious-exemptions (Congregation of Universal Wisdom‽) are being issued, and failing their appeals. Lots of "personal belief" exemption appeals are being filed, which nobody should accept.
There are legitimate edge-cases where people either can't take these vaccines, or can't recieve them in a timely fashion. But those appeals are being approved, because they make medical sense.
This was most recently adjudicated by the Supreme Court in 1906. No delaying tactic will work; I'd schedule all of their appeals during their vacations. Fail to show, lose.
I can only say to these idiots, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They should relocate to Flah-ri-dah and see if (the currently AWOL) Governor DeSantis will pay them a relocation bonus.
Careful what you ask for
By johnmcboston
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 8:49pm
"God created me with an immune system and I will not alter his design."
I liked the hospital that made 'religious' folks sign kist such an agreement and gave them their exemption. Then, if they take anything, even an asprin, it shows they are in violation of their signed 'nothing in my body for religious reasons' agreement and are fired for making false statements.
And on the eighth day
By Sock_Puppet
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 8:54pm
God made beer
Mmm ethanol
By brianjdamico
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 9:00pm
Just wait until they find out what that does to the holy body God made for them.
duplicate
By brianjdamico
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 9:00pm
duplicate
COVID loves your immune system
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 9:12pm
COVID uses your immune system to KILL YOU!
When they get in a car crash, I hope someone has made a note of their "religious restrictions" and allows them to go untreated lest their god get mad.
It’s “H”…
By anon
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 10:00pm
They’re going to all this trouble to use God as their crutch, but can’t be bothered to capitalize “His” in their sample statement, as any truly proper religious person knows to do. God likes vaccinations and capitalization.
Someone please tell me ….
By Lee
Thu, 12/30/2021 - 10:24pm
…. this isn’t real. That it’s just a clever hilarious parody.
Please!
Unfortunately it is very real
By Don't Panic
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 1:42am
Unfortunately it is very real @Lee. Some people would rather die than follow a government suggestion. It's been like this, like forever, and it never turns out well.
What’s the death rate these days?
By Doug1001
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 11:10am
Sounds spooky... Don’t panic, right?
No swearing?
By Luke Warmer
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 10:56am
I could see coming down on ad hominem attack, although even that is warranted when talking about plague rats posing as valuable members of our society.
but no swearing? Are you a Priest who only swears when he's around his other Priest friends?
Are we to serve the crown? The Vatican? No swearing but kill all the natives/ save all the fetuses/ starve all the babies and let God sort them out?
You/we are ensconced in ALL levels of discourse whether you want to be or not. Mark the levels all you want to, hallmonitors. Whatever gets you through the night.
Priests around their other priest friends...
By lbb
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 4:10pm
...are a caution. Just sayin'.
I am quite confused to be
By Anon
Fri, 12/31/2021 - 12:39pm
I am quite confused to be honest. How are they all going to apply for vacation time at the last minute and get it? Most jobs require you to ask at least two weeks in advance and they are allowed to say no if staffing isn't available to cover. Most sick days are three days without a note.
I LOVE unions but they gotta be careful. Biden and Wu are not Ronald Reagan but if the police and fire unions actually out residents in danger because of this baffoonery then they very well could see their power challenged. The air traffic controllers thought they had the upper hand and look at what happened there. They pushed too far and it cost the labor movement dearly. The police in particular should be careful. Don't they realize that the fever dream of many of their critics is a reduction in officers? It's hard to cut jobs outright but what if they were removed due to this? Maybe the spots just don't get filled.
Fire them
By Daan
Sat, 01/01/2022 - 2:24pm
Using the religious exemption excuse is an obvious attempt to abuse a privilege. Nothing in either the Federal or Commonwealth's grants a religious right exempting anyone from rules that directly address pubic health. The fact that they are coordinating this proves that these are not even authentic, genuinely held beliefs but are just attempts to abuse a right that has been interpreted plenty of times to NOT grant an exemption to public health activities.
On this other hand this helps make obvious the fact that the nation is suffering a pandemic of liars and hypocrites who want to cite "religious exemption" as the justification for bad behavior. Bad - nay, even evil - behavior and conduct directed against people they liars just don't like.
These folks deserve to be fired. They are welcome to move to states where lives of citizens are valued by the so-called leaders with the same measure of immaturity and contempt.
Hello, 311? I would like to
By Rob
Tue, 01/04/2022 - 12:42am
Hello, 311? I would like to register a complaint about the 311 website not having a category to file complaints about people who carry on beating a dead horse in a nested combox argument for so long that their last three repeats of the same disputed statement are simply vertical lines of individual letters, even when viewed on a 24" monitor!
Amen
By perruptor
Tue, 01/04/2022 - 8:41am
!
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