CNN fires 3 US employees for coming to office unvaccinated as part of ‘zero tolerance policy’

CNN President Jeff Zucker says company could make it a norm for employees to show proof of vaccination before entering CNN offices.

CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, US | Wikimedia Commons

New Delhi: In an internal email memo Thursday, CNN President Jeff Zucker said the company had terminated three employees for coming to the offices unvaccinated as it violates the company’s “honour system”, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“In the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming to the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated. Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this,” Zucker wrote, according to a tweet by CNN’s senior media reporter in New York, Oliver Darcy.

The memo didn’t specify in which office/s the terminations took place, according to Reuters.

Zucker said that going forward, furnishing proof of vaccination before entering CNN buildings might become the norm.

CNN pushes return-to-office date

Darcy, who posted a thread of tweets on Zucker’s memo, also mentioned that CNN was now planning to push retuning to offices full-time to mid-October.

Jeff Zucker says in memo to staff that CNN has postponed the Sept. 7 return-to-office date & is now targeting mid-October. "This was not an easy decision, and there is much to consider. The bottom line is that, based on the information that is available today…"

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 5, 2021

Currently, fully vaccinated CNN employees can work from office on a voluntary basis, and the media network had intended to return to working from its US offices full-time starting 7 September. However, Zucker, in his memo, announced that returning to office is being postponed as cases have been increasing in the US.

Further, Zucker has mandated wearing masks inside CNN’s offices in Washington DC, Los Angeles and Atlanta.

“Given the uncertainty that exists today, we are reluctant to put a specific date on it. We will evaluate in the coming weeks, and I promise that we will give you at least 30 days notice for any return,” Zucker said in the email, according to The Wall Street Journal report.

Focus on vaccinations

Vaccine mandates are gaining momentum among US employers. According to a CNN report, corporate America started issuing vaccine mandates after President Joe Biden announced on 29 July that all federal employees and on-site contractors should be vaccinated or tested regularly for Covid.

The Washington Post had reported that Covid-19 vaccination is now a ‘condition of employment’ for the newspaper’s staffers returning to offices on 13 September.

Companies such as Google, Netflix, Facebook and Morgan Stanley have also asked employees returning to offices in the US to mandatorily get vaccinated.

(Edited by Manasa Mohan)