Despite being approved for religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine, an employee reported that 140 staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, face unpaid leave beginning Oct. 15. Leon Workman, a Linux systems engineer with ORNL, told The Epoch Times that though he was approved for a religious and medical exemption, he will join the 140 employees who will be left without a paycheck. “It’s blatant religious discrimination,” Workman said. “A religious exemption without an accommodation is not a religious exemption.” The research laboratory is managed by the University of Tennessee-Battelle (UT-Battelle), a not-for-profit company established to operate the U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored center comprised of 5,500 staff members. In a Sept. 22 email Workman disclosed, ORNL’s Human Resources Director Jody Zahn told employees who had filed for an exemption that regular testing and allowing employees to continue to work from home, as they have …