CNN fires 3 employees for coming into office without being vaccinated

CNN announced this week that it’s recently fired three of its staffers, all for the same reason: Coming in to the cable news network’s offices without being vaccinated, in defiance of the company’s policies. Per Variety, chairman Jeff Zucker issued a memo to staff today, reminding them of the company’s “zero-tolerance policy” on mandatory vaccinations for those choosing to visit the company’s offices. In the same memo, Zucker noted that the company is stepping away from a plan to have staffers return to the office full-time on September 7.

“In the past week,” Zucker wrote to staff at the network,

We have been made aware of three employees who were coming into the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated. Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this. You need to be vaccinated to come to the office. And you need to be vaccinated to work in the field, with other employees, regardless of whether you enter an office or not. Period.

News of the CNN firings comes not long after Netflix established that it would be requiring employees to be vaccinated, both on the sets of its various productions, and in its actual offices, while other entertainment companies have also begun to follow suit. (Meanwhile, a number of stars, including Sean Penn and Sharon Stone, have begun making headlines by demanding vaccinated sets.). The CNN decision can be seen as a fairly hefty escalation, though, in so far as it’s one of the first entertainment industry entities to to actually terminate employees for violating these mandates.

Here’s Zucker again:

I think it is fair to say that we are all feeling a mix of anticipation, anxiety, frustration, confusion, and exasperation. All of that is to be expected. We all have decisions to make that impact so many aspects of our lives. I get it. If nothing else, the resilience and perseverance you all have shown for 18 months now needs to continue a little bit longer.