Arkansas Online

NEW YORK CITY to require all city workers to be vaccinated by Nov. 1.

MICHAEL R. SISAK AND MICHELLE L. PRICE Information for this article was contributed by Karen Matthews of The Associated Press.

NEW YORK — New York City will require its entire municipal workforce to be vaccinated against covid-19 or be placed on unpaid leave, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, giving an ultimatum to public employees, including police officers and firefighters who have refused the shots.

The Democrat gave approximately 46,000 unvaccinated city employees until Nov. 1 to get their first vaccine dose, and he offered an incentive: City workers who get a shot by Oct. 29 at a city-run vaccination site will get an extra $500 in pay.

“My job as your mayor is to keep this city safe, keep this city healthy. And vaccination is the way,” he said.

Unions representing some city employees immediately castigated the mandate as an unfair invasion of personal privacy.

New York City’s largest police union, the Police Benevolent Association, said getting vaccinated is a “personal medical decision” that officers should make in consultation with their doctors.

“Now that the city has moved to unilaterally impose a mandate, we will proceed with legal action to protect our members’ rights,” said the union’s president, Pat Lynch.

The city previously mandated vaccination for public school teachers, and the state has previously mandated inoculation for hospital workers.

With the expanded mandate, more than 300,000 city employees will need to be vaccinated, roughly 160,000 more than had previously been covered by vaccination rules. Jailers on Rikers Island, where the city has been grappling with staffing shortages creating unsafe conditions, won’t be subject to the mandate until Dec. 1.

De Blasio had been weighing a vaccination mandate for the police and fire departments and other city agencies for several weeks.

His announcement came amid new uproar over police officers defying other measures, such as wearing masks.

On Monday, two 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.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Wednesday that the incident was “absolutely inexcusable” and that the officers would be disciplined, though he wouldn’t say how.

“Nobody’s getting fired over this incident; nobody’s getting suspended over this incident,” Shea told reporters. “But at the same time, I’m not in any way, shape, or form attempting to downplay that. I think we’re better than that, and I think the public deserves better than that.”

About 69% of the Police Department’s workforce is vaccinated, compared with 77.4% of adult New Yorkers who have been fully vaccinated. The department has about 34,500 uniformed personnel and about 17,700 people in nonuniformed support positions.

More than 60 department employees have died of covid-19. 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.

Shea, who had covid-19 in January, and Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro have said they support a vaccination mandate.

New York City’s mandate comes as other cities are starting to punish — and even fire — first responders who fail to meet vaccination requirements.

In Seattle, six police officers and 11 firefighters are scheduled for termination after that city’s vaccination mandate took effect Monday. Another 93 Seattle officers and 66 firefighters were sidelined Tuesday while seeking religious or medical exemptions.

In Massachusetts, a police union said at least 150 state troopers are resigning over that state’s mandate. In Washington state, 127 state troopers had been fired as of Tuesday for defying a mandate and another 32 had resigned or retired rather than getting vaccinated.

In Chicago, where city workers are required to log their vaccination status, Mayor Lori Lightfoot last week accused the president of that city’s police union of trying to “induce an insurrection” by encouraging officers to defy that requirement — even after the union’s former president died of covid-19. The dispute is now in court.

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2021-10-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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