NEW YORK (AP) — New York City will require police officers, firefighters and other municipal workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be placed on unpaid leave, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, giving an ultimatum to public employees who’ve refused and ensuring a fight with some of the unions representing them.
The mandate affecting the nation’s largest police department and more than 100,000 other Big Apple workers — including trash haulers and building inspectors — carries a Nov. 1 deadline for getting the first vaccine dose, de Blasio announced.
Jailers on Rikers Island, where the city has been grappling with staffing shortages creating unsafe conditions, will be subject to the mandate on Dec. 1.
Of the workers affected by the new mandate, 71% have already received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the city.
The city previously mandated vaccines for public school teachers and the state has previously mandated vaccines for hospital workers.
City workers who get their first shot by Oct. 29 at a city-run vaccination site will get an extra $500 in their paycheck, the mayor’s said. Workers who don’t show proof of vaccination by Oct. 29 will be placed on leave.
“We’ve got to end the COVID-era. Our police officers, our EMTs, our firefighters, all our public employees — a lot of them come in very close contact with their fellow New Yorkers,” de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” after announcing the policy. “They need to be safe. Their families need to safe, but we also need to reassure all New Yorkers that if you’re working with a public employee, they’re vaccinated. Everyone’s going to be safe.”
De Blasio had been weighing a vaccine mandate for the police and fire departments and other city agencies for several weeks.
His announcement came amid new uproar over NYPD officers defying even simple measures, like wearing face masks. On Monday, two police officers were seen on video shoving a man out of a Manhattan subway station when he confronted them for flouting rules requiring they wear masks.
The NYPD’s vaccination rate has lagged behind the rest of the city, with some officers flat out refusing to get the shots. Unions representing officers, contending that getting the vaccine is a personal medical decision, said Wednesday they would sue over the 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,” Pat Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, said in a statement, “Now that the city has moved to unilaterally impose a mandate, we will proceed with legal action to protect our members’ rights.”
Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said: “Our union will fight just as hard as we did to ensure members could get the vaccine as we will to ensure they’re not mandated to do it. The rights of every detective are our top priority.”
About 69% of the NYPD’s workforce is vaccinated, compared with 77.4% of adult New Yorkers who have been fully vaccinated. The NYPD has about 34,500 uniformed personnel and about 17,700 people in non-uniformed support positions.
More than 60 NYPD employees have died of COVID-19, including five patrol officers, eight detectives and the former chief of transportation. The fire department, whose EMTs and paramedics were working around the clock in the early days of the pandemic, lost 16 workers to the virus.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro have said they support a vaccine mandate, with Shea telling reporters earlier this month that given the “emergency situation that we’re in, it makes sense.” Nigro said at a fire department memorial service, “I think it’s time.”
