PROVIDENCE – After previously defending his Jan. 14 deadline for city workers to get vaccinated or else risk losing their jobs, Mayor Jorge O. Elorza appears to be relaxing the timeline and the penalty for those who didn’t comply.
The 5% of city workers who did not get the first jab by the original deadline now have until Feb. 8 to do so, according to Andrew Grande, Elorza’s press secretary. Those who don’t will face “the first step of progressive discipline, in this case, a written warning in their personnel file,” Grande said in an email late Monday.
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When discipline will escalate into firing, as Elorza had originally suggested would be the case, was unclear.
“Those who remain noncompliant following the written warning will be subject to further progressive discipline, up-to and including termination, on a timeline deemed appropriate by the city,” Grande said in a second email sent Tuesday afternoon.
Asked why the mayor appeared to have relaxed the original deadline for the vaccine policy, Grande said the city’s goal is to retain its workers and bring them into compliance with the policy through education and opportunities to get vaccinated.
Grande did not immediately respond to a request from Providence Business News for the number of workers the 5% figure the city says are currently unvaccinated represents.
Elorza previously defended his mandate in response to criticism from City Council President John J. Igliozzi, who feared lawlessness from a mass firing of Providence police officers, many of whom had not been vaccinated.
As of Monday, 13% of sworn city law enforcement officers were unvaccinated, according to data shared by Grande. The police department was among a handful of city departments in which not all workers were vaccinated.
Others included the city probate court, in which 20% of staff were unvaccinated; the city’s assessor’s office and office of economic opportunity, which each had 16.7% unvaccinated; and the licensing board and city clerk’s office, each of which had 12.5% of staff unvaccinated. Across all city departments, 95% of workers had met the vaccine requirement, while 5% had not.
Grande declined to share specific numbers of unvaccinated workers per department, citing employee privacy.
The city is hosting a vaccine clinic on Jan. 27 to incentivize workers who have not gotten the shot to do so, according to Grande.
Elorza’s original mandate, announced in December, also required workers to complete their primary vaccine series by Feb. 28.
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Lavin@PBN.com.
