Citigroup lays off unvaccinated US employees

US bank Citigroup will send employees in the US who have not yet been vaccinated against Covid-19 by Friday on unpaid leave. They are dismissed at the end of the month unless they have an exception for medical or religious reasons. This is clear from an internal memo seen by Reuters news agency on Friday.

That makes the bank, which announced in October that it will implement a strict vaccination policy, the first on Wall Street to comply strictly with the vaccination obligation. The financial sector is grappling with how to safely return employees to the office so that normal business can resume – despite the wave of the contagious Omikron virus.

Other major Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, have instructed unvaccinated employees to work from home, but none have gone so far as to fire employees. Some other major US companies, including Google and United Airlines, have enacted “no vaccination, no job” policies, with varying rigor.

According to a source from Reuters, more than 90 percent of Citigroup employees have so far met the vaccination requirements, and this number is rapidly rising. The bank previously said it wanted to comply with the Biden administration’s policy requiring employees on government contracts to be vaccinated. However, the vaccination obligation is controversial in the United States; The US Supreme Court held a hearing Friday on the vaccination requirement for companies with 100 or more employees. Republican representatives from states and business groups have sued the measure.