Nearly 1,500 city workers lost their jobs Friday after failing to comply with a mandate that they are vaccinated for COVID — a bloodletting that included dismissals from the ranks of the NYPD, FDNY and the Department of Education.
While staggering in their sheer number, the firings were a long time in the making.
Mayor Adams’ predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, announced the vaccine mandate for city workers in October. Adams kept it in place when he took office, and by Friday, the city had hit a key milestone: for nearly 3,500 city workers, it was either time to show proof of inoculation or be sent packing.
Adams appeared to downplay the firings on Monday when the city announced the numbers, and instead of addressing them at a press conference or in a Q-and-A, he issued a written statement through a spokesperson.
“City workers served on the frontlines during the pandemic, and by getting vaccinated, they are, once again, showing how they are willing to do the right thing to protect themselves and all New Yorkers. Our goal was always to vaccinate, not terminate, and city workers stepped up and met the goal placed before them,” he said. “Out of all the new city employees who received notices two weeks ago, only two who worked last week are no longer employed by the city. I’m grateful to all the city workers who continue to serve New Yorkers and ‘Get Stuff Done’ for the greatest city in the world.”
It was not immediately clear who the two workers were that Adams referred to, or which agencies they worked for, but a spokesperson for the mayor said Monday that a total of 1,430 unvaccinated municipal employees were fired on Friday due to their refusal to comply with the mandate. Of those, 914 worked for the Education Department, 101 worked for the New York City Housing Authority and 75 worked for the Department of Correction.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) released a statement Monday evening disagreeing with the city’s legal authority to terminate employees based on the COVID vaccine mandate.
“The union is part of a lawsuit that would ensure that these cases go through the due process disciplinary procedures established in state law and the union contract. A hearing on this matter is scheduled for March 1, 2020, in New York State Supreme Court.”
The total number — 1,430 workers fired in a single day — is unprecedented in modern New York City history. Still, it is relatively small when bearing in mind that the city employs a workforce of more than 370,000.
The NYPD, FDNY and Sanitation Department also saw their share of employees head out the door over failing to follow the mandate, but far fewer left their ranks than from the other agencies. Thirty-six people employed by the NYPD were dismissed, 25 were forced out of the fire department and 40 were fired from the Department of Sanitation.
The departing employees fall into two categories.
The first group consists of people who were hired on or after Aug. 2, 2021. As a condition of being hired, they were required to be fully vaccinated within 45 days, but two weeks ago they were given notice that they had until last Friday to supply the city with proof of receiving a second vaccine dose.
About 1,000 city employees fell into that category, and of those, only two — apparently the ones Adams was referring to in his statement — were fired.
But far more people from the second group did receive termination notices.
That group of about 2,400 consisted of workers whose unions made a deal with the city to allow unvaccinated employees to receive health care benefits while simultaneously being on unpaid leave.
Since November, the people in that category who have remained unvaccinated have not been working or getting paid. And on Friday, 1,428 of them ran out of options when they failed to provide the city with proof of vaccination, which led to their being officially terminated.
The rest — about 40% of the 2,400 workers — have since been vaccinated and have returned to work.
Last week, Adams offered little sympathy to those who were on the firing line — though he begged to differ when it came to the term “firing.”
“We’re not firing them. People are quitting,” he said at a news conference last Thursday. “The responsibility is clear. We said it: if you’re hired, if you get this job, you have to be vaccinated. If you are not following the rules, you are making that decision.”
His and the city’s stance were backed up last week with two court rulings. In one, a Brooklyn federal judge rejected a push from anti-vaccine city workers to temporarily block the city from letting them go. In that decision, Judge Diane Gujarati declared that the anti-vaxxers had not “met their burden of demonstrating their entitlement to the extraordinary remedy of a temporary restraining order.”
In the other decision, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor turned down a request by 14 Department of Education employees who were terminated after the city denied their requests for religious exemptions to vaccination requirements.
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