New York City mandates vaccines: Are You Next?

In a time where many are still Leary to volunteer their bodies to undergo vaccinations for Covid-19, many people are finding themselves pinned up against a wall. 

Many places such as New York City are starting to mandate workers to vaccinate or get fired. 

New York City will require all city workers to be vaccinated by the end of the month or lose their paychecks, a new mandate for the nation’s largest municipal work force and one of the strictest in the country, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday.

Starting on Nov. 1, city workers — including police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers — must have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine and can no longer submit to regular testing as an alternative.

The new mandate, put in place after similar requirements for teachers and health care workers led to a surge in vaccinations, is the most aggressive step taken yet to boost vaccination rates in the city.

“Our public employees are going to lead us out of the Covid era,” Mr. de Blasio said on Wednesday morning.

New York is one of the first major cities to require vaccination for all of its workers without a testing option. San Francisco set a similar vaccine mandate for its 35,000 city workers that goes into effect Nov. 1.

The mandate in New York applies to roughly 160,000 employees, 46,000 of whom have not received a vaccine dose, city officials said. The city has more than 300,000 workers, but nearly half were already required to be vaccinated.

Any worker who does not get vaccinated by the deadline will be placed on unpaid leave. Medical and religious exemptions will be allowed “for a small number of employees,” a city official said.

Those who get their first doses at city-run vaccination sites between now and Oct. 29 will receive an extra $500 in their paychecks, the mayor said.

“We need to reassure all New  Yorkers that if you’re working with a public employee, they’re vaccinated,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Uniformed correction officers will initially be excluded from the new mandate because of the ongoing staffing crisis at Rikers Island, but they will be required to get vaccinated by Dec. 1, the mayor said.

A major police union, the Police Benevolent Association, vowed on Wednesday to fight the mandate in court.

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

Many are taking a stance and fighting back for their independent rights over their bodies. They understand the need to protect the people, but with all the side effects currently appearing from the vaccinations, it’s no surprise that many are hesitant. 

There have been more than a dozen legal challenges to vaccination mandates in New York City and state, but judges have so far broadly upheld the right of the government to mandate vaccination.

Statewide, health care workers who applied for religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate have won a preliminary injunction that allows many of them to keep working for now, even though religious exemptions were not permitted in the state’s vaccination order for health care workers.

Health care workers who were not vaccinated by the deadline and did not have an exemption have either been put on leave or fired by their private employers. Education employees have one year on unpaid leave, with health insurance, to get vaccinated or face dismissal in an arbitration ruling worked out with the city.

With New York City leading the forefront on vaccination mandating, will your state or city be next? It’s a question that’s sure to hang in the minds of many across the United States.