More than 500 City of San Diego employees are facing discipline, including "suspension without pay and potential termination" after failing to disclose their vaccination status to the city's Human Resources department by the Sep. 27 deadline.
"Departments are evaluating the specific circumstances for each employee who did not report their status," Nicole Darling, director of the city's communications department wrote in a statement.
A total of 588 employees have failed to respond, according to numbers provided to NBC 7 by the city of San Diego as of 9 a.m. Wednesday, although Darling advised that number may include several employees who are out on extended or medical leave for a variety of reasons.
"The City follows a progressive discipline model. All discipline is evaluated on a case-by-case basis and is dependent on the totality of circumstances for each employee and any previous discipline for misconduct that they had received," said Darling.
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Darling added that the progressive discipline model the city uses "does include verbal warnings."
It is unknown when employee discipline would begin, however, the deadline for an employee to report their COVID-19 vaccination status was close of business on Monday, Sep. 27.
The city announced Tuesday that its deadline for all city employees to become fully vaccinated had been pushed back from Nov. 2 to Dec.1 as negotiations with the city's main employee unions continued.
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The city confirmed that as of Aug. 25, more than 65% of the city's 11,000 employees reported they had been vaccinated. By Sep. 29, that number had risen to nearly 72%
In August, NBC 7 reported that the city initially required all city employees to report their vaccination status by Aug. 13, but included an option for employees to "decline to state" their vaccination status.
An updated request, which removed the "declined to state" option, was sent out to employees on Sep. 13 and required all employees to answer by Sep. 27.
