Heaps of garbage have been piling up across New York City as about 1,440 of the city’s 7,200 sanitation workers, nearly 20%, are placed on administrative leave for not complying with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate for municipal workers – which Mayor-elect Eric Adams has promised to revisit.
Adams won yesterday’s mayoral election with a landslide 68 percent of the vote over Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa’s 28.8 percent. He has already promised to sit down with unions to negotiate vaccine mandates that have not only impacted waste collection throughout the city but have also stretched the FDNY thin.
As of yesterday, 23 percent of the FDNY’s 11,000 firefighters are still not vaccinated and few have been given religious or medical exemptions, meaning 2,530 who haven’t had the shots yet cannot report for duty.
2,300 are on sick leave, meaning nearly a third of the force’s 11,000 uniformed firefighters aren’t on the streets.
What has been on the streets, however, is an inordinate amount of garbage bags piling up since Monday.
A woman nonchalantly passed heaps of garbage on 43rd Avenue in Queens on Wednesday
About 1,440 of the city’s 7,200 sanitation workers, nearly 20%, were placed on administrative leave Monday for not being vaccinated. A slowdown in pick-up has already begun, as seen in the above photo at 43rd Avenue in Queens
Garbage has been piling up across the city as a result of the shortage in staffing and due to a protest of outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate. Above, a family walks past the waste on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan
People walk past past uncollected trash along 54th Street. 1,440 of the city’s 7,200 sanitation workers, nearly 20%, have been placed on administrative leave
‘Most of my neighbors work for the city, and they’re supporting the sanitation workers. But if this continues, the situation is going to be unbearable,’ Juan Cuautle, a nonprofit worker in Staten Island – where the issue is at its worst – told Gothamist.
‘It’s going to get bad in the streets,’ Wendell Rivera, a 29-year-old sanitation worker who has requested a medical exemption, told the news outlet. ‘The garbage is going to pile up. We already have enough manpower problems.’
But de Blasio dismissed the issue and said that there has been a 92% compliance rate among city workers, although about 9,000 were placed on unpaid leave Monday, while another 12,000 have applied for religious or medical exemptions that could take days to weeks to review.
De Blasio announced the vaccine mandate on October 20, removing a weekly testing option and offering a $500 incentive for the jabs.
From October 24 to October 30, complaints about trash increased ten times from the previous month in Staten Island.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams has already vowed to revisit the mandate by negotiating with unions across the city. He is above trying a vegan sandwich at at Marinello’s Gourmet Deli in Brooklyn
Adams won yesterday’s mayoral election with a landslide 68 percent of the vote over Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa’s 28.8 percent
Since the mandate went into effect, employees told Gothamist that they have received substantial bonuses in exchange for helping to cover routes that have not received trash pick-ups. But other workers are intent on sending a message to the city.
Brian, a Staten Island sanitation worker who declined to give his last name, told Gothamist that he is vaccinated but supports his colleagues’ protest. ‘You leave stuff out, you leave stuff out. I’m sure the job didn’t get done to the city’s satisfaction today.’
Despite the number of garbage heaps piling up throughout the borough, a number of residents are encouraging the protest to continue in solidarity with the sanitation workers.
‘There’s no question people are upset their garbage is not being picked up. But I’d say there’s also support for the people not picking up. We’re a place that really does care about our city workers. The anger is aimed at the mayor,’ Councilman Joe Borelli, a Republican who represents the borough, told Gothamist.
As of yesterday, 2,530 or 23 percent of the FDNY’s 11,000 firefighters are still not vaccinated and cannot report for duty. Above, UFA President Andrew Ansbro spoke to hundreds of city workers at a rally protesting the COVID-19 vaccine mandate outside Gracie Mansion in New York on October 28
Another 2,300 firefighters are on sick leave, meaning nearly a third of the force’s 11,000 uniformed firefighters aren’t on the streets.
Meanwhile, Eric Adams has vowed to try and ‘reset’ the city and restore the faith of the NYPD in City Hall amid the vaccine mandates. On Wednesday morning, after partying the night away at swanky members club Zero Bond then Cipriani’s, Adams did the rounds on morning television.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, he said: ‘The mask mandates we should keep in place because we’re doing an amazing job on that.
‘And we need to revisit how we address the vaccine mandates. What I’m going to encourage him to do is to sit down with the unions. We can work this out.
‘This is a very difficult moment but there’s an opportunity to sit down with the unions. I communicated with some of the union leaders yesterday and they are open to sit down.
‘I’m going to encourage him to do that, he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, de Blasio threatened to fire the firefighters who have called out sick since the mandate took effect, accusing them of faking illness to avoid getting the shots and avoid losing their pay.
Of the 300 fire companies across the city, the Fire Commissioner said 12 were out of service yesterday – less than half of the 31 the unions claimed were down.
Firefighters across the board who are working say they are overstretched and understaffed. The FDNY has not released 911 response times for the three days since the vaccine mandate took effect, and it is the only agency that has the data.
De Blasio has also threatened to fire firefighters who have called out sick but are ‘faking it’, a claim firefighter unions have strongly denied. Hundreds of workers protested the mandate above outside Gracie Mansion on October 28
One five alarm fire in Harlem which ripped through five businesses was dealt with quickly; units arrived within four minutes, a minute quicker than the average 5 minutes before the mandate came into effect.
De Blasio has also threatened to fire firefighters who have called out sick but are ‘faking it’, a claim firefighter unions have strongly denied.
More than 2,000 firefighters are on sick leave and the FDNY said earlier this week the majority are unvaccinated, with some submitting bogus claims to avoid missing out on pay.
‘We’ve got firefighters who are faking sick leave and leaving fellow firefighters in the lurch and creating a danger…that is unconscionable and they will face consequences for what they have done,’ de Blasio said on Wednesday morning during an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who encouraged him to fire all 26,000 city workers who still haven’t received the shot.
Later, de Blasio said at a press briefing: ‘We’re not seeing any noticeable impact response times, for first responders continue to be strong and where we need them to be.
‘We’re seeing no disruption to service, firehouses are open, everything’s moving forward.’
However firefighters on the ground say the city is deliberately concealing response times and the total number of workers on unpaid leave to avoid panicking New Yorkers.
De Blasio announced the vaccine mandate on October 20th, removing a weekly testing option and offering a $500 incentive for the jabs
While 2,530 firefighters remain unvaccinated, the true number who are out of work is unclear because the FDNY won’t confirm how many have taken unpaid leave.
It’s unclear how many of the 2,300 out sick have other injuries too.
‘We have firefighters that put their lives on the line that are battling cancers, some WTC-related. We also have some operating at a fourth alarm fire in the Bronx.
‘We have a very dangerous job, firefighters get hurt in the line of duty… the assertion that thousands are faking medical leave, we reject,’ Andrew Ansbro, President of the UFA, said.
Among the firefighters sent home on Tuesday was Mark Keating.
‘Tonight my husband went in for his shift, like he has done over and over again throughout this pandemic.
‘But today he was told to go home because he’s fighting for his right to choose, and for the right to choose for our children.
‘I’m sick to my stomach over what this city has become,’ his wife Danielle said in a Facebook post.
Indeed, firefighters across the city are furious with de Blasio and accuse him of treating them like ‘second class citizens’.
Gary Debiase, 55, who served with L 109 for 29 years told of stepping over dead bodies on the day of the 9/11 attacks and said:
‘I wanna go back but I don’t want a shot. We’re in a position where we can go without for a few more weeks. Forcing someone to take a vaccine is coercion.
‘I’ll absolutely go back to work if they let me.
‘You can’t even sit down to eat. Are you kidding me? We made a sandwich at home because we can’t even sit in any of these places, we’ll eat it on the ferry on the wat home. We’re treated like second class citizens.
‘Everybody is ready to work. Nobody wants to go home. In the end, if we don’t win this fight, they will do whatever they want from now on. Mandates will be the new norm. Now you do this, now you do that.’