All BART employees and contractors will be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or prove their full vaccination status by mid-December under a policy the agency’s board adopted Thursday.
The policy — drafted by Board Directors Rebecca Saltzman, Lateefah Simon, Bevan Dufty and Janice Li — will require the full vaccination of BART’s employees and board members by Dec. 13, save for those who have a valid medical or religious exemption.
The board also voted as part of the vaccination policy to direct BART General Manager Bob Powers to implement a vaccination requirement for the agency’s contractors and bargain with the agency’s labor unions to determine how employees who decline to get vaccinated will be handled.
“By adopting this policy today, nobody is getting fired tomorrow,” Li said. “No one is being forced to get the vaccine, but this policy states that being vaccinated is a condition of employment.”
Several board members framed the policy as a necessity to keep both the transit agency’s employees and its riders, particularly children under 12 who are not yet eligible for vaccination, protected against the virus.
BART officials estimated that around 20 to 25 percent of BART’s nearly 4,000 employees remain unvaccinated, which Board Director Mark Foley argued could lead to further outbreaks and potential service disruptions.
Foley also said that he is acutely empathetic to those hesitant to get vaccinated, noting that he opposed vaccination for “more than a decade” after his then-1-year-old daughter was diagnosed with autism.
Foley and his daughter are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, he said Thursday, and his daughter ultimately received her scheduled vaccinations when she entered high school after Foley said he “allowed science to lead” him and his wife.
The policy, as written and approved Thursday, does not include an option for frequent testing for those who decline to get vaccinated.
Board Director Debora Allen, the only board member to vote against adopting the policy, took issue with that and argued that the agency should not infringe on its employees’ medical decisions.
Allen added that she got fully vaccinated this summer after initially being skeptical that the vaccine’s protection would be more robust than the antibodies she acquired from contracting the virus.
“I think each person should have the right to research and make their own medical decisions as I did without threats from their employer of losing their job,” she said. “So I come down on the side of every person making their own choice as to these medical treatments.”
24 comments
So 20-25% of the staff is unvaccinated … and if they are not vaccinated, it will cause service delays.
But, if 20-25% of the staff fails to show up to work (like Southwest Airlines), wont that cause service delays as well?
hmm …
Don’t ride bart . . .
How often do bart employees actually interact with riders ? ? ?
Has CAL OSHA or FED OSHA put out guidance yet on workplace jabs ? ?
So far have only heard of biden’s bluster and executive order.
Inquiring minds want to know how many service disruptions did BART suffer due to unvaccinated employees thus far?
If the vaccine is so great take it and leave everyone else alone.
I’m not worried about getting a covid from a Bart employee. They are usually distanced and isolated from us passengers. I’m more worried about being hurt by these druggies and transients on BART along with the thugs that board the trains and walk through giving everyone the ones look over.
So Foley was against vaccination because it allegedly gave his daughter autism, but now he’s all for it because you can’t get autism twice I guess?
Good thing he’s “allowing science to lead”.
Somebody that stupid should not speak. Ever.
Why not allow an antibody test, given that natural immunity is drastically more effective than vaccination?
“The new analysis relies on the database of Maccabi Healthcare Services, which enrolls about 2.5 million Israelis. The study, led by Tal Patalon and Sivan Gazit at KSM, the system’s research and innovation arm, found in two analyses that never-infected people who were vaccinated in January and February were, in June, July, and the first half of August, six to 13 times more likely to get infected than unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the coronavirus. In one analysis, comparing more than 32,000 people in the health system, the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital
Vaccines work if you don’t have enough antibodies.
I have enough antibodies. Why I need vaccine?
That blood based home antibody tests that are not available is somewhat suspicious and points to the idea it’s not about the virus but about getting you vaccinated for some reason even though we see people still getting sick even if vaccinated. Some companies developed these over a year ago but you still can’t get them. Yeah, if the test shows you have antibodies why get the vaccine unless the vaccine is actually for something else?
It’s not so much a question of quantity but actually of quality. There are some reports out there addressing it about antibodies raised by infection but there are no large conclusive studies about it because it is much more difficult to study this in natural infection compared to a controlled study in a cohort of individuals who have received the vaccine.
JWB,
Because they aren’t DOING ANY STUDIES!!!
Anyone can be the World Champion Boxer when nobody else shows up to the ring.
Do the studies if you’re really so concerned about “vaccine hesitancy”……until then, you’re all lying and covering up.
Wow, one BART board member that doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid?
She is on borrowed time, they will find a way to get rid of her.
Lol, the same Janice Li who protested and encouraged others to Resist BARTs no food policy.
Job Sites Listing Open Jobs w/ No Vax Mandates
https://gab.com/groups/49159
https://redballoon.work
https://www.jabfreejobs.info/
Bart
Bay Area radical transit
Don’t ride Bart
Work from home
Don’t feed the bear
They are political anarchists
Trying to achieve what ccc board has
A free pass to our money
Don’t participate in your own demise
Let’s Go Brandon! Let’s Go Brandon!
(ask your college-aged kids)
This is tyranny. Resist! Boycott BART!
No need to worry about seeing or interacting with BART employees and they are never around.
Seems about right, FDA is supposed to “authorize” death jab for kids right before Halloween…..for a large Sacrifice.
And then many employees will be fired right Before Christmas as a Big F.U. from the dems!
Deborah Allen is the only board member with common sense. It seems she’s in a constant battle with the progressive leftists board members. We should all keep supporting her moving forward. I have no affiliation with her I just appreciate Allen’s hard work.
The stupidity continues.
Bart should concentrate on screening the riffraff that shoot up, pee and poop on themselves, gate hoppers and panhandlers that seem to be the only riders left on Bart.
It really should be December12th. National ding-a-ling day.
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