ATCO Energy Puts Unvaccinated Workers On Unpaid Leave

In spite of the fact that the Canadian federal government nor any provincial government does not have a mandatory vaccination policy for the private sector, some companies have taken it upon themselves to try and enforce these draconian mandates on their employees anyway.

ATCO Energy is one of these companies which has subjected its employees to a vaccine mandate. Unvaccinated ATCO employees were put in a position where they either need to violate their own principles and get the vaccine or find themselves without work.

The National Telegraph was provided with the email from ATCO employees who had refused to be coerced into violating their closely-held principled.

Below that section the email from the Director of HR and Workforce Development, regarding those who do not comply states:

For those of you that will not meet the requirements of the Standard, ATCO respects that this is a personal choice. I recommend that you discuss this with your leader in the coming days. By the end of next week, your leader will be informing you of the steps to transition to an Unpaid Leave of Absence.

This is understandably a challenging time for some of you. If you have any questions around this, please reach out to your Leader or a member of our Human Resources team. As a reminder, our EFAP provider is also available for anyone who may need support.

This policy does not seem to have much point to it but simply forcing employees to comply with a mandate seeing as the currently available data on the spread COVID-19 shows that the vaccinated and unvaccinated are becoming infected generally in line with their proportion of the population. 

Below is a chart from the Alberta government demonstrating that vaccination is no longer an indicator of whether or not someone can spread/contract COVID-19. 

Even hospitalization and ICU occupancy is beginning to move in line with the vaccination rate of the general public. You can see this in the below chart from the Ontario government.

There is also little data to suggest that transmission of COVID-19 is likely in outdoor settings where many ATCO employees would find themselves working.

Unless ATCO is oddly fixated on people’s own personal healthcare choices that only affect them, it seems like the company, like many others, is implementing vaccine mandates in order to fall in line with the federal and provincial governments, who have been putting in place mandate on public employees. 

It is troubling that corporations and some private firms may be putting in place mandates for no sensible reason and are rather just implementing them because the government promotes it. Unvaccinated ATCO employees are being thrown under the bus simply because ATCO executives do not want to read the publicly available data and think for themselves.

It is a wonder how some people get into leadership positions in companies yet continue to just blindly follow government recommendations after 2 years of contradictory statements, actions, and the failures of vaccine passports, lockdowns, and mandates.