REPLACE THE POLICE WITH THESE GUYS:

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), which represents 140,000 active and retired craftspeople in the U.S. and Canada, issued a statement urging the labor movement to "lead by example." It goes further than other unions, which have generally stated that any vaccine requirement should be negotiated first at the bargaining table.

"We're not looking for anything at the bargaining table, and we're not looking at our support in return for something else," said incoming IUPAT General President Jim Williams Jr. "We feel COVID is a true health and safety risk on the job site, and if the employers mandate it, we want to be supportive. There's a ton of mandates that employers already put out for health and safety."

Williams said his union lost 65 members to COVID-19 last year. "What we in unionized construction pride ourselves in is being the safest workforce in the industry," he told the Prospect. "We'd be crazy to think that we're promoting health and safety by not having our workforce vaccinated at this point."

Tweet   @brothersjudd