Nurses and other health care workers at MaineGeneral Health, one of Maine’s largest healthcare providers, were unceremoniously fired two years ago if they refused to take the experimental mRNA injections touted as COVID-19 preventatives.
Some of those workers were even slapped with misconduct charges for refusing to comply with the mandate, many were later denied unemployment benefits, and no requests for religious exemptions were honored.
Now, one of the nonprofit hospitals that left some employees jobless and without recourse to Maine’s unemployment insurance benefits is sending text messages to the same employees it cast aside practically begging them to come back to work.
“You were once a proud member of the MaineGeneral team. Would you consider rejoining us? We would be pleased to discuss options with you,” the MaineGeneral Health Recruitment team said in a text message to former registered nurse Terry Poland.
“As you know, nearly 2 years ago MaineGeneral had to comply with a state mandate for COVID-19 vaccination. We lost a number of great employees as a result, including you,” MaineGeneral said.
“MaineGeneral has eliminated the COVID-19 vaccination as an employment condition,” MaineGeneral said.
Poland, who lives in Augusta, had worked as a registered nurse for 33 years. Her career included employment with MaineGeneral, Central Maine Medical Center, Pen Bay Medical Center, and the Aroostook Medical Center.
She couldn’t believe that the hospital would contact her in such a manner after casting her life into chaos for nearly two years.
“I was livid. Like, how dare you force me out of a career that I’ve dedicated my whole life to, taken away my livelihood, my ability to earn a good income, and now you think I’m gonna come grovel back to you?” Poland said. “I don’t hardly think so. And that’s the attitude of most everybody that I’ve been in contact with since yesterday.”
A source told the Maine Wire that about 15 former MaineGeneral Health employees received similar text messages.
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Poland refused to take the experimental COVID-19 shots after Gov. Janet Mills decreed on August 12, 2021 that healthcare workers would be forced to receive the shots as a condition of working in healthcare by October 1, 2021.
Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that MaineGeneral established a speedier timeline of Sept. 17 for compliance.
Eventually, the State pushed back the deadline to the end of October.
Poland was never opposed to vaccines generally speaking. Though she previous used a religious exemption to avoid taking an influenza shot, she willingly took the other vaccines required to work in healthcare prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, including immunizations for Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Hepatitis-B.
She said she was concerned about the novel nature of the mRNA technology, a form of gene therapy, which prior to COVID-19 had not been used in the standard schedule of immunizations.
“I knew enough not to take it. I’ve been a nurse long enough to know I need to question what new products are,” Poland said. “I’m not going to be the first one to jump on board of an experiment.”
When she discovered that fetal tissues are commonly used in the development and production of the drugs, that only strengthened her resolve as a Christian not to get the injections.
In previous years, Poland has said she was allowed an exemption from taking the influenza shot so long as she wore a mask during flu season. However, the hospital was unwilling to provide this accommodation for COVID-19.
As a result of her choice, Poland faced not only termination, but also an allegation of misconduct from her former employer.
When she applied for unemployment benefits, she was rejected because of the misconduct allegation.
When she appealed, she was turned away.
Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that the Maine Department of Labor determined that MaineGeneral Health “discharged” her; however, the agency concluded that Poland’s refusal to get the injections was a violation that constituted a “culpable breach of obligations to the employer.”
As a result, Poland had to rely on her savings to get by in the middle of economically disastrous government lockdowns and soaring inflation.
Poland then sought help from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that she’d been discriminated against on the basis of her religious beliefs.
MaineGeneral Health, in responding to the commission, argued that allowing Poland religious accommodations would impose an “undue hardship” on the hospital. On that basis, the commission declined to take on her case.
The Maine Human Rights Commission also rejected her discrimination complaint.
“[T]here has been positive energy between human resource personnel and managers who are in the process of working together to reach out to former employees to see if they are interested in returning,” said Joy McKenna, director of communications for MaineGeneral, in an email.
“Since Monday, we are only aware of a few people who have indicated that they are interested in having a conversation about applying for an open position,” she said. “We currently have 453 open positions, which is similar to our pre-COVID open position count.”
McKenna said the hospital did not intentionally fire unvaccinated employees in a way that would block them from getting unemployment benefits.
Some of those positions have been filled by foreign nationals with greencards, McKenna said, though she was not able to provide an exact number on Wednesday.
At the time MaineGeneral fired her, Poland was working at the MaineGeneral Rehabilitation and Long Term Care at Gray Birch facility in Augusta.
The facility provides nursing home and assisted living services and has a 37-bed capacity. Federal stats show the facility had 141 staff before the mandate and 110 after it was enforced.
In the years since she was fired, she estimates she’s earned only $12,000 and $17,000 as a home healthcare worker, a position that hasn’t provided similar benefits to the job she lost.
As a registered nurse, Poland was making about $75,000 per year.
She’s still not willing to give MaineGeneral another shot.
Poland is not the only one whose career was derailed by Gov. Mills’ mandate policy.
Jessie Boda worked for St. Mary’s Health System as a registered nurse in Psychiatric and Detox services for 13 years, her first job out of college.
When the mandate came down, she applied for a religious exemption.
In her letter requesting the exemption, Boda pointed to her religious faith and her concern over adverse vaccine reactions.
She also pointed out that natural immunity from a COVID-19 infection was in some cases a better protection against contracting the virus.
St. Mary’s, which has a formal affiliation with the Catholic Church, denied the request.
Like MaineGeneral, St. Mary’s also found a way for Boda’s exit from the company to prevent her from getting unemployment benefits.
“I did not comply and I never submitted a letter of resignation. Nor would they give me a letter of termination,” Boda said.
“The kind lady in the HR office gave me a letter stating my start date and end date of employment but told me she could not use the words ‘terminated’ or ‘fired’,” she said.
Boda took her case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which agreed to investigate her case but concluded there was no grounds for the complaint.
Kevin Palmer worked as a credentialing coordinator for Southern Maine Health Care, the Biddeford location of MaineHealth.
Palmer, who is in his 30s, was never opposed to taking vaccines before COVID-19, but he was skeptical of what he saw as a rushed process to roll out the COVID-19 shots.
“I had heart surgery in high school, survived brain cancer in my 20s, and now they’re telling me I have to get this shot over a virus with a 99.99 percent survival rate?” he said.
Like Boda and Poland, Palmer sought a religious exemption and was denied.
Like Boda and Poland, Palmer was fired in a way that later prevented him from obtaining unemployment.
In his termination letter, the HR department wrote: “This is also to confirm that September 30 will be your last day of employment. We want to thank you for your service.”
Even though the hospital gave him an employment date in an email, the Maine Department of Labor ruled against him.
“I never got a penny,” Palmer said.
He wasn’t able to find another job until four months later and the job he eventually found came with a 20 percent pay cut.
“I ran out of money like everybody else. It was crazy. I was trying to apply to jobs, similar to what I had done in credentialing. And I couldn’t even get a job with with the experience I had because they were mandating the vaccine even for remote positions,” said Palmer.
“How crazy is that?” he said.
A Healthcare Worker Crisis Caused by Authoritarian Policies
Thousands of former healthcare workers in Maine are currently unemployed or working in other fields because they refused to comply with Gov. Mills’ order that they receive injections.
Some refused because they were skeptical of all vaccines or because of religious beliefs concerning the ethical problems with vaccine research that uses fetal tissue.
Others were fearful that the long-term consequences of the experimental products were unknown, unknowable, and potentially harmful.
But in every case, the substantial drop in employment in Maine’s healthcare sector because of the mandate has severely exacerbated a workforce shortage that threatens to undermine healthcare quality in the state.
Text messages like the one Poland received will hardly fix the problem.
It’s virtually impossible to determine how much of the sharp drop in healthcare employment has been caused by Mills’ order, how much of it was caused by COVID-19, and how much of it was caused by lockdown policies generally.
Regardless, labor statistics show Maine is in the middle of the steepest decline in healthcare jobs. Ever.
According to stats from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those losses have been particularly acute in Maine’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities, like the facility where Poland worked.
In 2019, Maine had more than 22,600 individuals employed at nursing homes.
That number hit 19,800 in 2022.
At skilled nursing facilities, employment dropped from 8,426 in 2019 to 6,907 in 2022, according to Maine Department of Labor statistics.
The shortage of long-term care workers is all the more severe in Maine since the state consistently ranks as the oldest in the nation. As demand for nursing home beds increases, the number of workers available to provide that care has plummeted.
In home healthcare, total employment has declined from 4,401 workers in 2019 to 4,054 in 2022.
The same shortage can be seen in employment figures for hospitals in Maine. Mainers working in Maine hospitals declined from 33,000 in 2019 to 30,900 in 2021, according to federal statistics.
Even as Maine’s opioid epidemic has continued to break records for overdoses and deaths, the number people employed in the health sector that includes substance abuse facilities has declined from 7,509 workers in 2019 to 7,149 in 2022, according to Maine Department of Labor numbers.
One health care area that hasn’t seen such sharp declines is ambulatory health care, which includes facilities that are out-patient only, such as urgent care clinics and dentists offices.
At the same time the medical field is suffering from a lack of employees, Mainers have never spent more money on their health care.
Personal consumption of outpatient and in-home care topped $11,897,000,000 in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s a massive increase over the $11.2 billion reported for 2019.
At least some of that money is making its way into the pockets of Maine’s remaining health care workers. According to federal stats, Mainers who work in health care or social assistance made a record $7,028,362,000 in collective wages — the highest ever in Maine history.
Vaccine Mandate Victims Seek Discrimination Case
Gov. Mills’ mandate was based on the theory that the pharmaceutical products being touted as “vaccines” or “immunizations” would prevent healthcare workers from contracting the virus or transmitting it to patients.
It’s now generally understood that the vaccine never inhibited transmission of the virus.
Mills, who has followed the recommended injection schedule, has herself caught COVID-19 twice despite getting the jabs.
The Aug. 3 decision by the Mills Administration to rescind the mandate after nearly two years followed on the heels of an embarrassing legal defeat in a case challenging the constitutionality of Mills’ decision to eliminate religious and philosophical exemptions from the mandate.
That court case hinges on the fact that Mills continued to allow medical exemptions while denying a comparable exemption for medical reasons.
Although the plaintiffs in that case, several healthcare workers who lost their jobs over the mandate, initially lost in Maine District Court, an appeals court panel has determined that the lower court erred when it rejected their claim of religious discrimination.
In May, when that decision came down, Matt Staver, who represents the plaintiffs via Liberty Counsel, said he was looking forward to discovery.
“We’re frankly looking very much forward to going to discovery and holding Governor mills and the Maine authorities accountable for this terrible and, frankly, unconstitutional decision,” said Staver.
The Pandemic in a Nutshell
There is a virus
-Big PHARMA creates an experimental vaccine
-These vaccines are Authorized for Emergency Use, so the manufacturers can’t be held liable for side-effects and vaccine related injuries.
-By law, an EUA can’t be given if alternative treatments already exist.
-The government, the media, and pharmaceutical companies label alternative treatments as disinformation.
-The notion of mandating these experimental vaccines is contemplated.
-OSHA states if these vaccines are mandated, any side-effect or injury will be considered a reportable/recordable workplace injury.
-OSHA recants.
-CMS tells healthcare organizations it will withhold Medicare reimbursements for failure to uphold its vaccination policy.
-Healthcare facilities lobby the state government to mandate COVID vaccination policy.
-Maine imposes a COVID vaccine mandate issued by the Governor (not the legislature).
-Maine only accepts medical exemptions as it has done away with religious and philosophical exemptions.
-They will only accept exemptions per the CDC’s list of contraindications.
-Contraindications are a slim list; ie “severe allergic reaction to an mRNA vaccine or its ingredients.
-These vaccines are the first of its kind. Per the CDC, you have to get the vaccine to see if you are allergic.
-There is no testing alternative.
-Governor says if you do not comply, you will lose your job, and not be able to work anywhere in the state.
-If you are fired, the Department of Labor will consider your termination as “noncompliance with a workplace policy”, and you cannot receive unemployment benefits.
-The hospital’s vaccination consent form states it will not be held liable for side-effects or injuries incurred with its mandatory vaccination policy.
-The legislature (the law making body of government) will reject all bills asking to drop the mandate.
-The legislature will reject bills to allow those who were fired to be rehired.
-No judge will advocate for the unnecessary firing of healthcare workers; nor will the Maine Human Rights Commission or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
2 years later:
– The Appeals Court rules Constitutionally protected rights have been violated.
-The very day the state government is brought to court, the mandate is dropped.
Now…
Given the facts, does this really seem like this was all done for OUR HEALTH and Protection
Or…
Are You That Stupid???
You will do the bidding of the Supreme Soviet or off to the Gulag with you.
Why would any of the medical workers, who were smart and brave enough to refuse the jab, consider going back to the institutions that treated them so poorly? I keep reading articles about the next “pandemic” that is coming. Herr Mills will just enact medical mandates again. We need an alternate health care system that is independent of the CDC, big pharma and corporations….not sure that’s even a possibility these days. We’ve seen what’s been done to doctors who went against the “system”…just ask Dr. Nass.
Amazing and disgusting at the same time. These marxists think all is forgiven for ruining the lives of countless people as a power grab. There was zero actual science behind these forced vaccinations, in fact there is and will be great suffering in the days and years to come for people that took these shots. There is no quarter for these politicians and hospitals management that did this, we must never forget.
You reap what you sow! These organizations treated valuable employees with utter disrespect and destain. They were fired and then this ridiculous governor eliminated their ability to file for unemployment. That was cruel and unusual treatment. Consider the Mills who is in charge of the leader of the pack of hospitals doubling down on the chief executive Mills’ authoritarian edicts to harm people and made sure it hurt. Evil!
Choices have consequences…now they a reaping them. They have to own it.
These same authorities repeatedly stated the firing of medical workers had nothing to do with the staff shortages, every time it was brought up as a question in legislative committee meetings- they were liars then and liars now!
They will hire some of the 75,000 Karen Mills “New Mainers” who don’t speak English and are skilled at swimming across the Rio Grande.
Just say “NO”
My compliments to the people that lost their jobs. God Bless!
The vaxx is a mark of the beast. Recipients are either dead, heart injured, turbo cancered or some other illness. 30-100 side effects, in addition to the brain damage.
About 1/3 got a placebo or water, lucky you. Those that pushed the vaxx made a covenant with death.
There SHOULD be a cost for blindly trusting government.
Anyone who consented to the gene therapy experiment will be paying for that trust, for life.
I know I sleep well with the decision I made.
They forced them out of their jobs. Perhaps they will pass more bs laws forcing them to go back to work!
Come to Alabama
Welcome you with open arms.
Come to Alabama or any southern state, You would treated a lot better.
I know your roots are there and you are lifelong residents, but these people treated you terribly.
Sure, go back, but make them pay you the back pay that you lost.
Elections have consequences. How Mills treated the people of Maine was horrible. She did not care about the people of Maine. She allowed out of state health care workers to work in Maine and pay them over four times what the people of Maine were paid. Check out the testimonies during the the hearing committee when they were looking into allowing exemptions to the mandate. A woman testified that it was true that unvaccinated out of state health care workers were allowed to work in Maine. Representative Barbara Bagshaw asked twice if it was true and twice the woman said yes and had proof. Remember this at the polls and vote them all out.
I and 8 others lost our jobs in the Portland Fire Department because we did not get the shot. The Cities policy was; 1) Proof of Vaccination, 2) Laboratory Proof of Immunity, 3) Medical exemption. I like many others already had Covid. I produced Laboratory proof of immunity as well as a separate T-Cell test along with my Religious Exemptions. Didn’t matter, I was still fired on October 8, 2021. I also was scheduled for a heart procedure 5 days after my termination and with the risk of Myocarditis or Pericarditis, was just more risks of that shot. Funny thing regarding that procedure, I spoke to an individual that works in medical center where I had my procedure and was told that they will not do the procedure I had done, if the patients have gotten the shot/booster within 30 days of the procedure. No need to wonder why, the evidence was there soon after these shots came out in the spring on 2021 and the CDC had that evidence.
everyone of you discharge and punish must file law suit for jury trial over being force to jab your self or be fired , they do not own your body you do
Not only that they were fired, but the malicious way that they were terminated to prevent them from getting unemployment benefits. If the hospital system would have looked out for its employees while enforcing the ridiculous Mills’ policy, it would change things a bit. EMS agencies were subjected to the same idiocy. Hard to not feel spiteful towards these agencies and employers that treated folks like trash.
When you have time, browse any Obituary section in any national newspaper and search for the term, “Died Unexpectedly.”
Note the age of the person who passed away and you’ll mostly find young, vibrant people who were in the prime of their lives.
Dying suddenly used to be a rarity, now it commonly occurs with no media attention, but then again, trust a corporate CIA run media that is funded by Big Pharma? Surely you gest?!
When you let politicians run your hospital, this is exactly what you get. General Mills should be held accountable for her screw ups. Chuck Hayes , you should of stood up for those nurses and now that is biting you in the butt also. You are just as much at fault. It’s a personal choice in this country, not a law to be vaccinated. Yours truly, retired MGM RN
Remember, Governor Mills instituted the COVID vaccine mandate after the hospital association complained to her that they could not get all their employees to take the vaccine. They ASKED her to institute the mandate so they would be absolved of any change of work rules action, now they are “blaming” her for the loss of these people! They have repeatedly said that the vaccine mandate wasn’t a huge factor in their inability to staff their facilities but anecdotally we’ve heard as high as 30% loss of staff due to the mandate. Single party rule in Augusta ensured that no one could stop this action from happening or terminate it legislatively. Elections have consequences.
Lost in the shuffle are the victims of hospital protocols who were treated with Remdesivir per CDC guidelines. My wife was one of them and there are estimates of 600,000+ who were poisoned (effectively murdered) for government paid bonus money. A conspiracy theory? If doctors and hospitals are providing FULL TERM abortions and sex change surgery for minors for money why wouldn’t they do the same for treating Covid patients?
Should we fell sorry that the hospitals in Maine that are short on staff thanks to Mills and Nirav Shah who failed upward? Not until these hack politicians and administrators are held accountable.
I retired from my job of 40 years and went to work for MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta as a Secretary. I was 64 years old. Never called out sick and did everything that was asked of me. In comes Covid-19 and I am still expected to be at work every day completing the requirements of my job. There were no “vaccines”, masks were not allowed and we never knew when an infected patient would arrive. Then the shot came into play and all bets were off. No shot no job was the mantra. I did not want to inject myself with an experimental drug since the long term effects of the drug were unknown. I also did not want a drug that involved fetal tissue, and submitted a letter stating my religious exemption. I was denied any religious exemptions by the HR department at the hospital. I had to answer a questionnaire for the HR Department stating my intentions for the jab. At the end of the questionnaire I was required to sign a statement that stated I understood I could be causing the death of my fellow employees by not getting the “Vaccine”. Then just to add salt to the wound, the hospital sent an email to everyone stating that they would be giving a substantial bonus to thank everyone who worked during the pandemic. The bonus would be paid out the second week of November. Of course anyone who did not get the shot would be terminated by October 31 and would NOT be eligible for the bonus. It didn’t matter that they had also worked thru the pandemic, what the bonus was really for was a reward for getting the “vaccine”.
I was terminated at the end of October. Traveler nurses were hired by the hospital from other states with NO shot requirements. It was devastating and such a betrayal for everything I had done for the hospital. But that wasn’t the end of it. I filed a complaint with the EEOC for discrimination sending all the documents I had proving it. It was denied. The Maine Human Rights Commission then sent me a letter denying any wrong doing stating that no discrimination had been proven. I tried to file for unemployment and it was denied.
I was just asked if I would like to go back to MaineGeneral Medical Center and have my job back…never!
For a profession that is supposed to care for hearts and souls, what they did was beyond heartless to their very own, and they did it with righteous indignation. And right at the time when employees had selflessly just broken their own bodies taking care of 2 years of major Covid onslaught. What a cruel thing to do including the manner in which they proceeded to seal all contingencies. And for what end? And you can bet your boots that no one is going to trust them (Mills, and the whole medical establishment that threw them under the bus) in the future. Constitutional right needs to be upheld as well as God given rights of freedom of choice when it comes to deciding what goes into a person’s body. Patient’s have that right and so should medical care workers. The establishment needs to be held accountable.
As a civil servant with the federal government, I was threatened with my job, and paid dearly by being ostracized, shamed, ridiculed, reprimanded, made to work from home, punished for not being in the office, religious exemption requests ignored, denied time off and financial award, and then after the mandate was ruled unconstitutional and ended because the administration didn’t have a leg to stand on, I was told by HR to just forget what happened and both sides should understand and forgive each other.
I hope every one of those fired nurses sues the hospital and demands all the back pay back.
Susan Isgro . . . two things struck me: The hospitals were not forced to comply. The opening of the email/text attempts to make them the victim. Mandates only work if more people comply than don’t.
I would think the mandating they did to you and others for the vax but NOT the Traveler Nurses is 100% an act not only of discrimination, but a lawsuit waiting to be taken against these hospitals that did this. There might be a law that if a nurse’s home state didn’t have the mandate, then Maine couldn’t impose one? Wow, that was indeed a pouring of salt in your wounds. Stand strong, and NEVER FORGET.
Why on earth would you go back? You couldn’t eve trust them again. If that shat on you once, they will shit on your again.
In the middle of what was presented to the public and local medical care businesses as a public health crisis with people sick and dying everywhere, bureaucrats and corporations deliberately reduced medical staff with no proof that their reasoning was valid for doing so. There was some evidence presented, but that evidence never met any reasonable standard of proof.
Meanwhile, the pandemic protocols already in place for many years, warned against lockdowns. Reputable economists warned against supply chain destruction and the national shortage of health care workers was already reaching the point of crisis in many areas for lower-income citizens.
Along came an experimental prophylactic, one with no long-term safety record after with no endpoint of transmission reduction. The very same bureaucrats and corporate executives that imposed poverty on millions with their lockdowns, then made becoming an experimental trial subject a condition for employment. They cared nothing for the sick who lost access to treatment and they deliberately made the health care staffing crisis even worse.
Countless numbers of private medical practice offices were driven into bankruptcy and forced to close as the result of this repudiation of the existing protocols, and depriving sick people of access to the early care provided by those practitioners made minor medical problems into major problems, degrading public health. The existing pandemic protocols warned against such outcomes, but self-interested individuals deliberately chose to ignore those warnings.
The excess death statistics and ballooning disability rosters give testimony to the erudition of those who crafted the protocols that were discarded by foolish and corrupt bureaucrats and corporate executives.
The utilitarian calculus represents the classic “trolley problem.” The very same people who refer to seatbelt usage as a public health issue, refuse to consider death and illness caused by the lockdowns and mass human experimental trials within their calculations of balance of harms.
Where one stands on the issue of gene-expression prophylactics is largely irrelevant to the issue of enforced poverty and the deliberate reduction in qualified and dedicated health care staff. The cascade of adverse events resulting from the various mandates reveals itself everywhere one looks and the statistics present a devastating indictment of the individuals who abused our trust and their authority by imposing those mandates.
By allowing them to avoid admitting their errors and crimes, we enable them to repeat those actions. There can be no trust regained of unrepentant liars.
I posted a link to this story on Facebook last year and got flagged yesterday and threaten for posting a cyber security link and warned about violating their community standards. You might want to contact them for an explanation because if i got it everyone who posted it got it. They are dishonest clowns.
One million bonus per nurse.
All the money wasted by NASA could easily enable free healthcare for all. Anyone profiting from incorrect treatment to cause or prolong illness shall receive the death penalty.