New York City is bracing for the fallout as the deadline for a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers passed on Friday and thousands of municipal workers are still rejecting the forced inoculations.
Thousands of police officers, firefighters, garbage collectors, and other city workers let a 5:00 pm Friday deadline pass by without receiving at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The estimated 26,000 city workers who didn’t comply with the mandate will be put on unpaid leave starting today.
At least half of the workers have submitted exemption requests, according to WABC-TV.
Some city departments have already felt the manpower shortage, including the sanitation department and the fire department. A huge protest of New York municipal workers, including many firefighters, revealed the extent of the opposition to the vaccine mandates.
And the New York Post reports the FDNY shuttered 26 fire stations citywide on Saturday due to staff shortages caused by the COVID-19 mandate, according to furious elected officials, who ripped the move as “unconscionable” — and warned it could have catastrophic consequences.
FDNY spokesman Jim Long told the newspaper the closings were not permanent, but “temporarily out of service.”
Department officials accused the firefighters union of orchestrating an illegal job action, according to WABC-TV.
Union officials denied the allegations, explaining in an early Monday news conference that firefighters were not given the same amount of time teachers and health care workers had been given to comply with the vaccine mandate. They also maintained that their members were not participating in a sickout, according to the station.
Over the weekend, Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro called the move by a group of firefighters “contrary to their oaths to serve.”
“The excessive sick leave by a group of our Firefighters because of their anger at the vaccine mandate for all city employees is unacceptable, contrary to their oaths to serve, and may endanger the lives of New Yorkers,” he said in a statement. “Despite these actions by some, the Department will continue to respond to all calls for help that come our way.”
According to WABC-TV, as of Sunday night, vaccination rates stood at 84% for the NYPD, 82% for the Department of Sanitation, and 80% for the Fire Department.
State Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-SI, Brooklyn) said five fire companies were closed in her district and laid the blame on Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“.@FDNY Ladder 149 in Dyker Heights #Brooklyn was closed today due to Mayor de Blasio’s overreaching vaccine mandate. If he doesn’t reverse course, the city will lose first responders and put New Yorkers in more danger,” she tweeted.
Mayor de Blasio held firm on the mandate even as tempers flared on Friday with six firefighters suspended for taking a fire truck to a lawmaker’s office and threatening his staff over the vaccine mandate.
Protests against the mandate began last week when firefighters and other workers rallied outside de Blasio’s official residence Thursday, sanitation workers appeared to be skipping garbage pick-ups in protest and the city’s largest police union went to an appeals court seeking a halt to the vaccine requirement.
De Blasio says the city has contingencies to maintain adequate staffing and public safety, including mandatory overtime and extra shifts — tools that he said were typically used “in times of challenging crisis.”
The mayor called the sanitation slowdowns “unacceptable” and said the department will move to 12-hour and begin working Sunday shifts to ensure trash doesn’t pile up.
“My job is to keep people safe — my employees, and 8.8 million people,” de Blasio said at a virtual news briefing. “And until we defeat COVID, people are not safe. If we don’t stop COVID, New Yorkers will die.”
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