Updated: Mar. 25, 2022, 9:53 a.m. | Published: Mar. 24, 2022, 3:25 p.m.
By Paul Liotta | pliotta@siadvance.com
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Most private employees in New York City have needed coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines since Dec. 27, but that’s no longer true for some of the wealthiest among us.
Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday that professional athletes and performers will no longer be beholden to the mandate, but people who lost their jobs since employment mandates went into effect, including former city workers, are out of luck.
For City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-South Shore), the decision “flies in the face of common sense.”
“We shouldn’t be firing our own employees while picking and choosing exempt people, because of science,” Borelli said.
Adams said during his morning media briefing from Queens’ Citi Field that there’s no plan as of Thursday to rehire the estimated 1,400 workers who lost their livelihoods as a result of the mandates.
Borelli said it marks the latest in a series of COVID-related mandates that didn’t place New York in a better position than other parts of the country with fewer protocols.
“The only reason we’re having this announcement today is because we’re the only place in the country that has unreasonable mandates that prevent athletes from playing in the first place,” he said. “When you look at the bigger picture, New York wasn’t a leader of COVID. We actually have some of the worst health outcomes in the entire country.”
As of Thursday, New York has the 12th highest number of COVID deaths per 100,000 people in the U.S. throughout the pandemic, according to a New York Times Chart that aggregates metrics from around the country.
Borelli wasn’t the only City Council official to question the mayor’s decision announced Thursday.
Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) issued a statement questioning the logic behind the exemption announcement, and expressing concern about the effect it will have on the public’s response to the pandemic.
“I’m worried about the increasingly ambiguous messages that are being sent to New Yorkers about public health during this continuing pandemic,” she said. “I have serious concerns about the process, rationale and inequity in today’s decision to exempt professional athletes and performers from the city’s private employee vaccine requirement when over 1,400 city government workers, many of whom served bravely on the frontlines during this pandemic, were fired from their jobs for not getting vaccinated.”
“This exemption sends the wrong message that higher-paid workers and celebrities are being valued as more important than our devoted civil servants, which I reject,” the Council’s highest-ranked member continued. “This is a step away from following sensible public health-driven policies that prioritize equity.”
City Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) also questioned the decision. The office of City Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-North Shore) did not respond to a request for comment.
‘While I support the continued lifting of pandemic-related restrictions and mandates, we simply need to end the City’s vaccine mandate for public and private employees and rehire all the City workers that were terminated refusing to get vaccinated,” Carr said. “We cannot have a set rules of some people and a different set for everyone else.”
The mayor justified his decision as a leveling of the playing field for local athletes and performers that will help spur the city’s recovering economy.
Dr. Jay Varma, who served as a top COVID advisor during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, took to Twitter to say that the new exemption would likely impact the broader private mandate.
“#VaccinesWork … unless you’re rich and powerful, in which case, #LobbyingWorks. This mandate has always been about NYC employers. It had legal standing because [it] applied to all,” the doctor wrote. “The #KyrieCarveOut opens City up to entire scheme being voided by courts as “arbitrary and capricious.”
#KyrieCarveOut refers to Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving, who has publicly refused to get vaccinated and not been allowed to play in Brooklyn home games.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) said she agreed with the mayor’s decision, but added that the mandate lift should be extended to all workers.
“From the very beginning of this pandemic, what has bothered New Yorkers the most is how arbitrary mandates and restrictions have been implemented with double standards in the name of ‘following the science,” she said.
“Mayor Adams should immediately rehire the city workers who were fired and lift the vaccine mandate on all public and private-sector employers that has led to people losing their livelihoods at a time when we have a labor shortage.”
As of February, New York City has an unemployment rate of 7% while the rest of the state is at about 3.4%, according to data published Thursday by the New York Department of Labor.
Nationally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published data earlier this month that found New York City with some of the highest “labor-underutilization” metrics in the country last year. Those numbers include the unemployed, workers employed part-time for economic reasons, and those marginally attached to the labor force.
The number was about 9.4% across the country in 2021, but about 15.5% in the city.
Assemblyman Mike Reilly (R-South Shore) saw Adams’ Thursday announcement as vindication of the years-long opposition to the government’s COVID mandates.
“Mayor Adams’ decision to grant unvaccinated athletes and performers an exemption from the very same rules that all other New Yorkers have been forced to follow shows that city officials value profit above all else,” he said. “This pandemic will be remembered in the history of our city, state, [and] nation as a dark moment for government accountability.”
Reilly and Assemblyman Mike Tannousis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) also said public school students also shouldn’t be excluded from activities based on their vaccination status.
“It is fundamentally unfair that the vaccine mandate has been lifted for professional athletes and entertainers while it is selectively enforced for our children and our city workers,” he said.
“The job of a professional athlete or entertainer isn’t more important than that of a city worker. Additionally, children shouldn’t be prohibited from attending school events and activities based on their COVID-19 vaccination status. I call on our city government to lift these unjust vaccine mandates and reinstate the employment our city workers immediately.”