Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution employee Tiffany Setzer, right, holds a sign as she faces the correctional facility during an informational picket on Friday. Staff photo by Joseph C. Garza
Employees of Terre Haute’s United States Penitentiary staged an “informational picket” outside the prison Friday afternoon, decrying the vaccine mandate for federal workers, which they say threatens an institution that is already sorely understaffed.
Harold Smith, organizer of the picket and president of prison union AFGE Local 720, said, “We’re standing in unity that we think this should be a choice, not a mandate. My freedom to choose is not negotiable.” Federal employees and those who work for federal contractors are at risk of losing their jobs if they don’t get the vaccine by Nov. 9.
Smith added, “We’re going to lose a lot of good staff. We had a gentleman retire today because of this. He named this as the one reason, and a high-ranking administrator put in for retirement, as well, because he feels this is unfortunate, this coming down this way.”
Steve Markle, the treasurer for AFGE Local 720, reported that currently out of 630 employees, 57% of the employees have at least one shot and 47% have both. In 2016, the prison was considered at optimal efficiency with 771 employees.
“I had a parent that was sick, so I did take it, but I had the choice to take it -- the other people here, their choice was taken away from them. Now they’re saying, you have to take it or you’ll be terminated,” Markle said.
He continued, “When you think about a federal prison that takes a certain amount of workforce to actually run it, and we’re talking about a prison that was already 130 jobs shorter than it was in 2016, what are you going to do? If we lose 50 employees, if we lose 100 employees, we won’t be able to function. We won’t be able to run a safe and secure prison, and that’s going to affect the community.”
Just under 100 people gathered on the grounds of the Dollar General store across the highway from the prison. A Cajun food truck served protestors, and a T-shirt vender peddled shirts and hoodies reading, “Soul Not For Sale” and “Come And Make Me” with the image of a syringe. A flag disparaging President Joe Biden in an obscene fashion waved among those in attendance. Signs read “From Essential To Expendable,” “More Staff = Safer Prisons” and “Jesus Wasn’t Vaccinated.”
“When this does go through come November 9 and we see the discipline process play through, we’re going to lose between 50 and 150 staff,” said correctional officer Josh Stonebraker, vice president of the union. “There’s nothing I can think of where something’s been forced so hard by the government onto us. It gives you pause as to what’s really happening.
“Everybody’s worried,” he added. “We do what we have to to get by, but nobody likes to be told what to do.”
Tiffany Setzer, an employee at the prison, said, “I just feel that we should be given the freedom to choose what we put into our bodies. If you choose to get vaccinated, that’s your choice, but those of us who don’t wish to, we shouldn’t be mandated to do so. I don’t feel that I’m comfortable with some of the different outcomes that people have had.”
Bruce Borders, Indiana State Representative for House District 45, spoke at length at the prison picket. Of those who have been vaccinated, he said, “In most cases, they have been misled.”
Travis Newman of federal contractor GE Aviation, which earlier in the day had more than two dozen picketers demonstrating in solidarity with prison employees -- a reprise of their original protest last week -- also spoke at the prison event.
He contrasted the vaccine mandate from other government regulations, such as mandatory seat-belt laws. “How that is different is that that is not taking something into your physical body that is not otherwise there,” Newman said. “Everyone has a right to refuse medical treatment. You do not have to be medicated by the federal government or your employer.”
Tammy Callahan of GE Aviation also attended the prison event. “I’m supporting them,” she said. “To say we’re gonna lose our rights, our jobs, if we don’t take it, to me, I’m sorry, that’s wrong. ... It’s a spiritual battle -- not of the flesh and blood, but on the spiritual realm.”
“It’s the way it’s been rolled out -- it’s more of an authoritative, ‘You’re going to do this and you have no options,’ when other options have worked,” Smith said. “We’ve been front-line workers from the very beginning -- we social-distanced, we wore masks and we practiced hand sanitation.
“Those measures were effective, and a lot of people feel that this is not a true vaccine,” he added. “It’s alarming to folks that you can take the shot and still carry and transmit it.”
Also on Friday, the Supreme Court turned down a request from a group of Maine health-care workers to block a state vaccination mandate that does not contain an exemption for religious objections.
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