The Hershey Company has started to terminate the employees who decided not to take the COVID-19 shots. And that’s not the whole story.
Besides losing their jobs, employees are also asked to sign a confidentiality agreement in which they forfeit their rights to sue the company or to talk about any negative experiences in the process, as The Blaze points out.
What are the details?
This termination push has come about after several months of meetings during which the human resources department did their best to find out if the employees had changed their mind about the COVID-19 immunization shots, as the outlet reports.
“I really thought I’d be OK. I thought you cannot question my faith. Nobody can question that,” Kim Durham, a payment analyst and sourcing buyer with the Hershey Company, said for the Epoch Times.
Ms. Durham had previously asked for a religious exemption to the vaccination policy in the company, but her request was denied.
“I thought it was behind me until I met an HR representative. It was an interrogation on religious beliefs, and they twisted your words and tried to put words in your mouth. It was terrible, and I was asked such personal questions that had nothing to do with religion,” she added.
The human resources department reportedly asked employees to reveal if they had ever had a vaccine, how often they went to church, and if their kids were vaccinated. The department went on to add that those employees who refused the COVID-19 vaccine and still took over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol, ibuprofen, Tums, and Midol were, in fact, not religious since those meds had shared ingredients with the coronavirus shots, according to The Blaze.
Hershey employees who sign the confidentiality agreement will get a “special separation payment,” but most are refusing to sign it and will have to walk away without the severance payment.
“We are losing our jobs over this vaccine policy. It’s wrong that a company can terminate you, and you lose your livelihood. It should not be forced,” Ms. Durham concluded.