NEW YORK—The nation’s largest banks continue to take a hard stance on employees who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus, with Citigroup the latest to announce that its U.S. employees who had not been vaccinated as of Jan. 14 have been placed on unpaid leave and will be fired at the end of the month.
The only exception is for employees who have been granted an exemption, according to a company memo reviewed by Reuters, the news outlet reported.
The bank had announced in October 2021 it planned to impose new vaccination rules now has become the first major Wall Street institution to follow through with a strict vaccine mandate, Reuters said.
“Its move comes as the financial industry grapples with how to bring workers back to offices safely and get back to business as usual at a time when the highly infectious omicron coronavirus variant is spreading like wildfire,” Reuters reported.
Other Companies’ Positions
Other major Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs & Co, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., have told some unvaccinated employees to work from home, but have not yet gone as far as firing staff, Reuters added.
While Citigroup is the first Wall Street bank to enforce a vaccine mandate, a handful of other major U.S. companies have introduced "no-jab, no-job" policies, including Google and United Airlines, with varying degrees of stringency, Reuters said.
“More than 90% of Citigroup employees have complied with the mandate so far and that figure is rising rapidly, according to a source familiar with the matter, adding that the timing of the vaccination mandate would be different for branch staff,” Reuters reported.