Gundersen employees protest vaccine mandate

Signs and bullhorns and honking car horns marked a demonstration outside Gundersen in La Crosse on Tuesday, led by hospital workers fighting for their jobs against a mandate. 

A few dozen protesters gathered along South Avenue to oppose the hospital’s requirement for employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine by November 1st, or be fired. 

David Anderson is a Gundersen nurse, who says the government and the vaccine makers don’t impose similar mandates.

“They’re not coercing their employees to be vaccinated if they decline it,” he said. “We’re facing being fired for not getting it, while the companies that are making the vaccines and the federal institutions promoting them aren’t holding themselves to the same standard.”

Anderson says “about 15 per cent” of Gundersen staff are unvaccinated employees have not had the vaccine yet.  That adds up to 12-hundred workers.   “But we also have widespread support from vaccinated staff who chose to receive the vaccine, but also support our choice to not be vaccinated.”

Gundersen released a statement saying the policy of the health system is to require COVID vaccination of employees.