{"id":4741,"date":"2021-12-02T09:55:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T13:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=4741"},"modified":"2021-12-02T09:55:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T13:55:10","slug":"region-of-queens-workers-must-be-vaccinated-or-risk-losing-their-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2021\/12\/02\/region-of-queens-workers-must-be-vaccinated-or-risk-losing-their-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Region of Queens workers must be vaccinated or risk losing their job"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4743\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4743\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4743\" src=\"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Region-of-Queens-Administration-Building-300x188.jpeg\" alt=\"A long, brick building\" width=\"300\" height=\"188\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Region-of-Queens-Administration-Building-300x188.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Region-of-Queens-Administration-Building-1024x641.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Region-of-Queens-Administration-Building-768x481.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Region-of-Queens-Administration-Building.jpeg 1167w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4743\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Region of Queens Administration Building. Photo Ed Halverson<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>The Region of Queens will require anyone entering a municipally operated building to be double vaccinated.<\/p>\n<p>Council voted to unanimously approve the measures at a special session Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Darlene Norman says the aim is to provide a safe environment for staff and the public.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCouncil all agreed. They all recognized that COVID is an airborne disease, strains are multiplying, and we need to take as many precautionary acts as we can,\u201d said Norman.<\/p>\n<p>Unvaccinated people may still enter the administration building to pay bills, fees or pick up permits or documents.<\/p>\n<p>Proof of a first dose must be presented to the Region\u2019s Safety Officer or staff supervisor by December 31 and full vaccination needs to be shown by February 15, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Any employee failing to meet the deadline will be placed on unpaid leave for 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>If that employee still isn\u2019t vaccinated at the end of those 30 days, they will be fired.<\/p>\n<p>The policy applies to employees required to interact with members of the public, other staff, contractors, or access common building spaces in the performance of their daily duties.<\/p>\n<p>Norman says the Region is taking this step to fill what she sees as a lack of direction from the province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne would have hoped that the provincial government would have made a policy that went straight across the board rather than leaving this up to individual municipalities,\u201d said Norman. \u201cHowever, they did not, so we did.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Region of Queens new mandatory vaccine policy is effective immediately.<\/p>\n<p><strong>E-mail:\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:edhalversonnews@gmail.com\">edhalversonnews@gmail.com<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Twitter: @edwardhalverson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>To listen to the broadcast of this story, press play below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Region of Queens will require anyone entering a municipally operated building to be double vaccinated. Council voted to unanimously approve the measures at a special session Wednesday. Mayor Darlene Norman says the aim is to provide a safe environment for staff and the public. \u201cCouncil all agreed. They all recognized that COVID is an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[79,419,24],"class_list":["post-4741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-darlene-norman","tag-mandatory-vaccination","tag-region-of-queens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4744,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}