United Airlines is cleaning up the skies.
The airline company announced Tuesday that almost 600 employees, out of 67,000, missed Monday’s deadline to get their first COVID-19 vaccine shot.
Another 2,000 applied for religious or medical exemptions.
Of the remaining 65,000, just 593 refused to get the vaccine, meaning they will be fired.
“We know for some, that decision was a reluctant one,” United Chief Executive Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart said in a letter to employees Tuesday, obtained by the Daily News.
“But there’s no doubt in our minds that some of you will have avoided a future hospital stay — or even death — because you got vaccinated.”
United announced the vaccine mandate in early August, making it the first major airline to require the shot. Frontier and Hawaiian followed and Delta raised its insurance premiums for unvaccinated employees.
The company has “started the process” to fire the 593 noncompliant employees, a spokesperson told The News Wednesday.
“The pandemic is now killing more than 2,000 people per day — a 65% increase in just the past 30 days — and the most effective way to keep our people safe, is to make sure they’re vaccinated,” Kirby and Hart wrote.
“We have no greater responsibility than to ensure everyone’s safety at work. And now that nearly all of our U.S. employees are vaccinated, we take another important step forward as we emerge from the pandemic as a better, stronger United Airlines.”
