MILWAUKEE — During Milwaukee County's COVID-19 briefing on Tuesday, County Executive David Crowley reported that about 72% of county employees have complied with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
With about 4,060 employees impacted by the mandate, over 1,000 still have not shown proof of being vaccinated. The deadline to show proof of vaccine or request an exemption for county employees was Oct. 1.
According to Crowley, those who are unvaccinated will be required to continue certain mitigation measures including masking and bi-weekly testing depending on the department. If still not vaccinated by Oct. 29, employees could face unpaid suspension and even termination.
"We're going to continue working with each department individually, to look further into the data to make sure the information is being tracked accurately," Crowley said.
Other larger employers in the area have also implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates for employees. According to our partners at the Milwaukee Business Journal, Molson Coors, Manpower Group and Advocate Aurora each say more than 90% of their employees have complied with mandates.
Rich Kirchen with the Business Journal reports, "Manpower group did say that about 1% of their employees are no longer there because they did not comply with the vaccine mandate."
Kirchen also noted that at Molson Coors, the mandate applies to office staff and not to those who work at the plant.
"Companies are requiring vaccines for people that work in the office or white collar staff, but not plant employees. Part of that is that a lot of the factory workers are represented by labor unions and that's something the employer would have to negotiate with the unions," Krichen said. "Some manufacturers are worried that if they mandate vaccines, those employees will leave - and there's a shortage right now for manufacturing."
Kirchen said between those three companies, thousands of employees are impacted by a vaccine mandate.