Ingalls and Stennis employees must get COVID vaccine after new federal deadline set
Ingalls Shipbuilding and John C. Stennis Space Center now require all employees be vaccinated by Dec. 8, 2021, following updated guidance handed down by the Biden administration on Friday.
The president’s Safer Federal Workforce Task Force on Friday issued the December deadline, which is updated instruction for federal contractors to comply with after the COVID-19 vaccination mandate issued on Sept. 9.
Ingalls and Stennis, two of the Coast’s largest employers, are federal contractors subject to the guidance.
Ingalls leadership has announced to employees that they need to be vaccinated by the early December deadline.
“While we are still assessing and evaluating the details of this new mandate, what we do know is this: By Dec. 8, 2021, employees of federal contractors, which includes HII, must be fully vaccinated,” Huntington Ingalls Industries President and CEO Mike Petters said in a letter published Friday.
“While Huntington Ingalls Industries is a publicly traded company, we are a federal contractor because we provide services to our military and government customers through federal contracts. For that reason, we are bound by any regulations, policies and contractual provisions that apply to all federal contractors.”
Stennis said their site also will comply with Biden’s updated guidance.
“As a federal site, Stennis Space Center is preparing to adhere, as required, to the president’s recent executive order on COVID-19,” said a spokesperson in a statement.
The news comes after spokespeople for both Ingalls and Stennis said last week they had not set a vaccination requirement in the days following Biden’s Sept. 9 announcement that businesses with over 100 employees must mandate the vaccine or weekly testing. Both said they were monitoring federal updates ahead of issuing decisions.
Employees from both federal contractors, along with workers at other large employers on the Gulf Coast, told the Sun Herald they would leave their jobs if the vaccine mandate became a reality.
“I didn’t get vaccinated,” Gulfport resident Marcus Hopkins, 18, said before his shift at Ingalls last Monday. “I don’t feel comfortable getting the vaccine. If I’m not showing symptoms, I don’t feel like I need it. If they make me take it, I would just leave.”
This article and live event is supported by the Journalism and Public Information Fund, a fund of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
This story was originally published September 28, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
