Mayor says all city workers must get vaxxed
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Mayor Bill de Blasio announced all city employees must have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine before 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Photo via the mayor’s office/Flickr
By Jacob Kaye
Every member of the nation’s largest municipal workforce will be required to get at least one jab of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the month if they haven’t already, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday.
The new mandate, which will apply to all of the city’s 300,000 person municipal workforce, builds on previous mandates, including one that applied to the city’s school system employees, ordered by de Blasio in recent months. Under the new mandate, employees will have until 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 29, to get at least one shot of the vaccine.
“If you're a City worker, you need to be vaccinated,” de Blasio said Wednesday. “We are here to keep you safe so you can keep everyone else safe. We need you to keep everyone around you in the workplace safe. We need you to make sure that people who you encounter, the people of this city, the residents of the city are safe. Everyone needs to be vaccinated.”
The mandate is expected to cover around 160,000 city employees, 46,000 of whom have not been vaccinated yet. The remaining 140,000 people in the city’s workforce were already under a vaccine mandate.
Those workers who get their first dose by Oct. 29 will receive an extra $500 in their paychecks. Those workers who don’t will be placed on unpaid leave.
“If you do [get vaccinated], you continue on your work. If you don't, you're on leave without pay,” the mayor said. “We want you to come back.”
De Blasio and Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi pointed to the city’s mandate on school and health employees as a reason for moving forward with the citywide mandate.
In the city’s public schools, around 96 percent of teachers and staff are now vaccinated after the city implemented the mandate in late September, according to de Blasio. Citywide, around 72 percent of all New York City residents – around 6 million people – have at least one dose of the vaccine.
“We have also shown that vaccine requirements work, particularly when they're joined with efforts to build vaccine confidence, lower access barriers and provide incentives,” Chokshi said. “Because of those mandates and other efforts, our schools and hospitals, and our restaurants and recreation are all safer.”
Like the city’s mandate in the schools, it’s newest effort is likely to face legal action. And like past lawsuits, it’s likely judges uphold the city’s right to impose the mandates.
New York City Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch announced his union would file a lawsuit against the city over the imposed mandate.
“From the beginning of the de Blasio administration’s haphazard vaccine rollout, we have fought to make the vaccine available to every member who chooses it, while also protecting their right to make that personal medical decision in consultation with their own doctor,” Lynch said. “Now that the city has moved to unilaterally impose a mandate, we will proceed with legal action to protect our members’ rights.”
With 69 percent of its members vaccinated as of last week, the NYPD ranks among the least vaccinated agencies in the city, according to the mayor’s office. Also among some of the least vaccinated agencies is the FDNY (60 percent of EMS workers and 59 percent of firefighters are vaccinated), the Department of Sanitation (60 percent) and the New York City Housing Authority (58 percent).
Ranking dead last is the Department of Correction, with roughly half of its staff at least partially inoculated against the virus that has killed over 34,000 people in the five boroughs. De Blasio said Wednesday that the mandate wouldn’t kick in for correction officers until Dec. 1, in an effort to not further complicate issues on Rikers Island stemming from staffing shortages.
Earlier this month, Correctional Officers’ Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio told members of the State Assembly Committee on Corrections that he had not encouraged members to get vaccinated. At the time of the hearing, Boscio himself was unvaccinated.
“We recommend that it's their choice,” Boscio said at the hearing, adding that he had city doctors come speak to the union at a previous union meeting.
Five officers, one captain and five non-uniformed staff members have died of COVID-19 since March 2020 and hundreds have been infected by the virus, according to the Department of Correction.
Boscio said Wednesday that he feared the mandate would lead to an even greater number of officers missing work.
"Throughout the pandemic, COBA fought vigorously to provide our members with PPE, free COVID-19 testing and access to the vaccines if our members wished to be vaccinated. That being said, we have also maintained that our members deserve the right to free choice with respect to the vaccine,” Boscio said in a statement. “Given the severity of the ongoing staffing crisis that continues to force our members to work triple and quadruple shifts without meals and rest, it makes no sense to impose a mandate that could result in officers losing their jobs.”
“Additionally, we find it extremely hypocritical to impose a vaccine mandate on our officers, yet there is no mandate for the inmates in our custody to be vaccinated nor the visitors who come in and out of our jails every single day," he added.
