About 3,000 French nationals working in the medical and care sector have been suspended from work for deciding not to get vaccinated against the CCP virus before a government-imposed deadline, France’s Minister of Health announced on Sept. 16.
Two months ago, President Emanuel Macron ordered hospital staff, ambulance technicians, nursing home workers, doctors, fire brigade members, and people caring for the elderly or infirm in their homes—some 2.6 million employees in total—to get a COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 15.
“Yesterday, some 3,000 suspensions were served on staff in health and social care facilities who had not yet entered into a vaccination course,” Olivier Veran told French RTL radio, originally in French.
“Most of the suspensions are only temporary. ... Many of them have decided to get vaccinated as they see that the vaccination mandate is a reality.”
French Health Minister Olivier Veran gestures as he speaks during a session of questions to the government at the National Assembly in Paris, on Sept. 7, 2021. Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
According to local daily Nice Matin, nearly 450 health workers have been suspended in a hospital in the city of Nice, in southern France.
The French government reported on Sept. 7 that around 84 percent of staff in care homes and health care establishments had received two vaccine shots, meaning about a total of 300,000 care employees remain unvaccinated.
Employees not vaccinated could get laid off from their jobs or have their pay suspended, authorities said as they announced the new mandate earlier this year, although a top court in France has forbidden employers from firing staff in the medical and care sector.
“From Sept. 15, if you are a caregiver and you are not vaccinated, you will no longer be able to work and you will no longer be paid,” Veran said during an interview with France’s LCI earlier this week, AA reported.
Health care workers who have received only one dose of a vaccine will have to take a CCP virus test every three days until they’ve completed their second dose—Oct. 15 is the deadline for both vaccines to be administered.
Firms and employers are subjected to penalties if they fail to comply with Macron’s order and receive fines of $160 (135 euros) that can climb up to $4,430 (3,750 euros) after being fined three times in one month, Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace reported. The penalties can also be accompanied by six months in prison.
Some hospitals have previously expressed concerns that mass lay-offs would result in staff shortages.
Hospital workers gather in protest of the health pass outside the CHU (University Hospital) Pellegrin where the health pass is mandatory in Bordeaux, southwestern France, on Aug. 9, 2021. Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images
Emmanuel Chignon managed to keep his nursing care home in western France running through the worst of the CCP virus pandemic, but now he is confronting a new crisis: staff who would rather quit than comply with a government mandate that they get vaccinated.
“We feel like we’re living through a third wave, but this time it’s a human resources wave,” Chignon said on Sept. 14 at the nursing home he runs in Bordeaux, southwest of Paris.
Vanessa Perotti, a health care worker at Hopital Beaujon in Clichy, a working-class Paris suburb, is also among the workers who decided not to get vaccinated and instead quit her job in the medical field.
Thierry Paysant, a fire safety officer with the public hospital system in Nice, took another approach and pitched a tent in front of the city’s Saint-Pons abbey, and erected a placard reading “Hunger Strike” in large red letters.
Thierry Paysant, security worker and firefighter at the Pasteur hospital, and Christophe, caregiver at the Pasteur hospital, hold a banner that reads "Hunger strike" to protest against France's restrictions, including compulsory COVID-19 passes, near the Abbaye Saint-Pons in Nice, France, on Sept. 15, 2021. Eric Gaillard/Reuters
“We will go as far as we are able to go,” Paysant said outside the abbey, where he had also set up a camping stove.
He added that he wasn’t against the vaccination itself, but objects to people being forced to get the shot or risk losing their jobs.
“It’s hard to swallow,” he said. “It was imposed in a violent way.”
Some media outlets have attempted to characterize demonstrations against vaccine passports, dubbed health passes by the French government, as “anti-vaccine,” but many protesters have said they’re against the vaccine passports and mandates, not the vaccines themselves.
Vaccine passports have been flagged by a variety of organizations, including civil liberties groups, as creating a two-tier society of vaccinated and unvaccinated.
