Last Monday, there was a state administrative agency in Oregon that mistakenly released the vaccination status of as many as 40,000 state employees to various news organizations in what is now being termed a “breach of trust.”
An individual working as a communications manager at the Oregon Department of Administrative Services mistakenly sent out a spreadsheet to several Oregon periodicals that contained the vaccination status for all of the executive employees. Moreover, this spreadsheet also detailed whether they had a medical or religious exemption.
Another interesting item of note would have to be the area where the spreadsheet had indicated whether the employee’s exemption request was still being processed or if the employee had not submitted the needed information.
Personal information such as the home address or the social security number were not included in the report.
In August, Democrat Governor Kate Brown had issued an executive order that required that all executive branch employees, health care workers, and education workers would have to be fully vaccinated by that following Monday or they would lose their jobs. These news organizations requested information on the latest vaccination rates along with the exemption rates for each of the executive agencies when this mandate went into effect a couple of days ago.
Instead, Oregon Department of Administrative Services relations director Adam Crawford sent these individuals the spreadsheet that disclosed the vaccination status of tens of thousands of these state employees.
“It’s a mistake on my part,” Crawford told the Oregonian/OregonLive. It took a follow-up email with the Statesman Journal before he would provide the newspaper with a redacted version of that spreadsheet where he asked that the personal information should not be reported.
To their credit, neither news outlet disclosed the personal details of any of the Oregon state employees.
Still, a spokesman for the Oregon Public Services and Care Provider Union declared that the release of that information would violate an agreement the union had signed with the state in September where they promised that they would keep all employee vaccination information confidential.
“More concerning is that one of the main things that we heard from members who were vaccine-hesitant is they were concerned about their privacy in this situation. This is a breach of trust at the worst possible time,” SEIU 503 spokesman Ben Morris told the Oregonian/OregonLive.
The outlet is reporting that the large state agencies are now experiencing low verified vaccination rates among their employees, including the Oregon State Police (74%), the Corrections Department (70%), and the Forestry Department (65%). Moreover, the corrections department said that they have granted religious exemptions to 19% of their employees; the state police has given exemptions to 14% of their workers.
There are thousands of workers in Oregon and neighboring Washington that will face termination of their job if they fail to comply with the states’ vaccination mandates, both of which went into effect on October 18th.