‘Let Us Work’: Fired New York City Workers Rally in Support of Bill Requiring City to Reinstate Jobs With Back Pay
Hundreds gathered at New York’s City Hall calling for legislation requiring the city to rehire all employees fired over now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Speakers called for back pay and
This piece originally appeared in Children’s Health Defense’s The Defender. Honest Media is sharing it to our audience with their permission. View the original story here: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/nyc-workers-rally-fired-covid-mandate-unvaxed/
Members of the New York City Council’s Common Sense Caucus today introduced a resolution in support of state legislation to reinstate, with back pay and no legal restrictions, all city employees fired for not complying with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Unvaccinated city workers rallied with the council members on the steps of New York’s City Hall under the banner, “Let Us Work.”
Cosponsored by New York City Council member Joann Ariola and minority leader Joseph Borelli, the resolution advocates for the passage of Senate Bill S7466A, which would make the job reinstatement for unvaccinated workers a matter of state law.
However, the resolution is nonbinding and unlikely to gain passage by the full Council, according to Michael Kane, founder of the advocacy group Teachers For Choice and co-organizer of the event.
Kane told The Defender, “We are calling on all New Yorkers to call their senators in the city committees where the bill is currently and ask them to cosponsor the bill.”
“We want to know who says yes and who says no,” he said. “Three years into this battle and after thousands of New Yorkers have left the city and state, we still have momentum with residents fighting against vaccine mandates in New York City,” he said.
The press conference drew about 200 people and was timed with the first anniversary of the end of the city’s vaccine mandate for public and private sector workers, which resulted in the termination or resignation of over 1,700 police officers, firefighters, EMTs, teachers and other city employees.
Ariola, chair of the city’s Committee on Fire and Emergency Management and member of the Common Sense Caucus, opened the press conference with a statement of support for city workers who lost “jobs that they loved all for refusing to take a vaccine … that is no longer mandated.”
Ariola lamented the fact that many of these workers are still unemployed when the city and state have spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars on litigation” to prevent certain members of the city’s fire, police, sanitation departments and New York City teachers, healthcare workers and other city workers from returning to work.
“Add it up,” she said. “It would be much less than having them return to the workforce and become the heroes that they were meant to be.”
The government is requiring former employees to sign a waiver forfeiting their civil service rights and rights to back pay to get their jobs back, Ariola said.
“For many who have unjustly been denied the opportunity to earn a living over the past two years, this is unacceptable,” Ariola said. Others in similar situations were permitted to return to work without signing the waiver, she added.
“They will not sign a waiver and they will continue to sue,” she added.
Courts have yielded ‘no decision, no movement at all’
Ariola introduced Kane, who lost his 14-plus-year teaching job in the Bronx in late 2021 because of the vaccine mandate and is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits against the city.
Kane said today was also the first anniversary of several court cases – Kane v. de Blasio, Keil v. The City of New York, and New Yorkers for Religious Liberty (NYFRL) v. City of New York – coming before the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, but with “no decision … no movement at all.”
“If the courts don’t do it, we have to do it in the legislative [branch],” he said.
“It’s quite an emotional thing,” Kane said, recalling the times he and other unvaccinated people were “called names” and “ostracized.”
“But history, while it turns in a long and winding road, it bends in the direction of truth. And that’s where we’re headed now,” he said.
Kane thanked Sen. Andrew J. Lanza for introducing bill S7466A in Albany, the state capital. The bill would require “the reinstatement of certain officers and employees of the city of New York who were dismissed from employment due to a COVID-19 vaccine requirement.”
‘How is there not any common-sense logic?’
Kane, firefighter Sal Maida and EMT Jack Lin spoke briefly at the rally, followed by Oren Barzilay, union president of Local 2507, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors.
Barzilay pointed out that while fired city employees remain jobless, city positions stand vacant and new hires are not mandated to take vaccines.
“How does that make any sense?” He said. “Let them come back, continue the work that they do, help our city, being short as it is with the staff issues.”
Borelli criticized the city for sending recruiters “all over the city and into other states” trying to fill open positions when “there are dozens, hundreds of people that used to work for you – they’re qualified – that could start working for you tomorrow.”
“How is there not any common-sense logic?” he asked, adding, “Sometimes in government, we have to figure out complex problems. This is not one of them.”
Near the end of the press conference, a member of the press asked, “Why should the public care about this issue?”
Kane answered:
“If we don’t care about this issue now, it’s going to happen again. They’re going to do the same thing that they did to us two years ago, again. They’re going to pour something into your body, into your children’s body for you to access society, for you to get a slice of pizza, for you to go to the library, for you to earn employment, for you to go to school.
“We must say ‘Never again!’ to that.”
Favorable court rulings failed to help many fired workers
New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates for city workers went into effect in October 2021 under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. The strict rules resulted in the termination or resignation of approximately 1,750 city employees, including 36 EMS workers from the fire department and more than 950 Department of Education employees.
The mandates sparked immediate legal challenges from municipal labor unions and grassroots worker rights groups.
“There are three federal cases currently in front of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals dealing with workers fired and banned from their jobs for being unvaccinated,” said Kane on Feb. 6 on CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD” show.
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