Citigroup to fire unvaccinated workers

US employees of Citigroup who have not been vaccinated against covid 19 by January 14 will be put on unpaid leave and will be fired at the end of the month unless they are granted an exemption. In October, the bank announced its plan to impose new vaccination rules and now it has become the first major Wall Street institution to follow through with a strict vaccine mandate. 

The bank announces its move as the financial industry struggles with getting workers back onto offices safely and getting back into business as usual at a time when the highly infectious Omicron variant is spreading across the country. Other major Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have told unvaccinated employees to work from home. None of them have yet gone so far yet to fire unvaccinated workers.

While Citigroup is the first Wall Street bank to enforce a vaccine mandate, many other US companies including Google and United Airlines have adopted a "no-jab, no-job" policy with varying degrees of stringency. At Citigroup, more than 90% of employees have complied with the vaccine mandate and that rate is rising rapidly. The bank said it was complying with the policy of President Joe Biden's administration as the government is a "large and important" client.

Source: CNN