Major teachers’ union head endorses vaccine mandate for educators

‘We need to be working with our employers, not opposing them’, Weingarten says

Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers Union. (Getty Images)

The head of the National Federation of Teachers is calling on educators across the nation to support efforts by some lawmakers to institute mandates requiring teachers to receive the Covid-19 vaccine before returning to in-person classes in the fall.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Randi Weingarten reminded viewers that vaccines for other diseases such as polio are already mandated in schools across the country, while commending teachers who had already chosen to get vaccinated.

“[V]accines are the single most important way of dealing with Covid,” said Ms Weingarten, adding: “We've always dealt with, or since 1850, we've dealt with vaccines in schools. It's not a new thing to have immunizations in schools.”

She continued: “{O]n a personal matter, as a matter of personal conscience, I think that we need to be working with our employers, not opposing them, on vaccine mandates”.

ATF President Randi Weingarten now says she will support vaccine mandates for teachers.

"I think that on a personal matter, as a matter of personal conscience, I think we need to be working with our employers, not opposing them, on vaccine mandates & all their vaccine policies." pic.twitter.com/gJc8hulggU

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 8, 2021

Concurring with Ms Weingarten’s comments in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that he couldn’t imagine why some school districts believed that confining dozens (if not more, in some cases such as lunchtime and in between classes) of students and teachers in rooms indoors for hours at a time could be safe if many were unvaccinated.

“I can’t think of a business right now that would put 30 unvaccinated people in a confined space without masks and keep them there for the whole day,” he said. “No business would do that responsibly, and yet that’s what we’re going to be doing in some schools”.

All Americans over the age of 12 are eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, but it has not yet been approved for younger children. Such a divide is complicating the return of schools to full in-person learning, as children are still able to contract the virus but are much less likely to die from Covid-19 symptoms.

Their remarks come as the Delta variant of Covid-19 has raged across the US, particularly in areas where rates of vaccination remain low. The Biden administration and some Republican lawmakers have ramped up efforts to encourage Americans to get the vaccine even as some, including members of Congress, have falsely denounced the vaccine as “untested” and spread misinformation to discourage Americans from getting it.

Misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine is now seen as the leading cause of dropping vaccination rates around the country, prompting the US surgeon general to issue a public health warning about false information last month.