Mediation was set to resume Dec. 9 between the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s prime contractor and six lab employees who sued the company over its COVID-19 vaccination policy.
Plaintiffs led by Jeffrey and Jessica Bilyeu were to sit down with the University of Tennessee-Battelle (UT-Battelle) contractor team and mediator Chadwick Hatmaker in an attempt to settle litigation about contractor policy that requires most workers get vaccinated the potentially deadly illnesses.
The policy did provide certain medical and religious exemptions.
In late September, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Atchley, Jr. balked at the idea of tying up the court schedule for a case where the parties had said months earlier was all-but-settled, absent a few details. The judge ordered the parties to resume good-faith settlement talks, saying “it is difficult for the court to view plaintiffs’ refusal to return to mediation as anything other than recalcitrant.”
The case against UT-Battelle’s mandatory vaccination policy was brought in October 2021, after the plaintiffs said the policy resulted in them being placed on unpaid leave. The workers returned to the job early in 2022 after a U.S. District Court District judge temporarily prevented the federal government and contractors from enforcing vaccination mandates.
The DOE claims that vaccination rates for its federal employees and contract workers is above 90%. DOE has stopped asking workers about their vaccination status.
