Several New York City workers are fighting to get their jobs back after they were unjustly fired for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The workers are demanding immediate reinstatement and back pay for the time they were unemployed. The city’s public-sector unions have banded together in a push to get their members reinstated, and they have been successful in several court battles against the vaccine mandate.
Mayor Eric Adams has already expressed willingness to compromise on the issue, but workers argue that his plan doesn’t go far enough.
Municipal Labor Committee Chairman Harry Nespoli is calling for all city workers who were fired due to the vaccine mandate to be automatically given their jobs back and awarded back pay to compensate for the time they went without income.
Nespoli is also weighing legal action to get that done, and has lots of support from workers and other union leaders. Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2507, which represents FDNY EMTs, believes that fired city workers should not have to go through a reapplication process. He argues that the workers’ dignity was stripped away, along with their constitutional rights, and their beliefs were violated.
The situation puts Mayor Adams and the City Council in a tough spot. Even before Adams announced the plan to drop the vaccine mandate, public-sector workers had racked up several court victories over the issue. A Staten Island judge ruled in October that the city should reinstate, with back pay, a group of Sanitation Department workers who refused to get vaccinated.
NYC trash pile-up caused by union sanitation workers protesting vaccine mandates.
“Look, you’re going to have some spots in the city that they feel very strongly about this,” Teamsters Local 831 President Harry Nespoli said. https://t.co/KP2XjP3n6q
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 3, 2021
As chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee, Nespoli is weighing his legal options to get justice for the fired workers. He argues that these workers deserve immediate reinstatement to maintain their wages and seniority.
The workers are angry that they were fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine while migrant kids are allowed to attend school without proof of any shots at all.
They believe that ordinary Americans need a voice in big city politics, and that the City Council should help them get their jobs back. The situation is precarious, and the City is over a barrel with the angry workers and their supporters. The workers are demanding justice, and they are not going to back down until they get it.
Sources: Rightwingnewshour, NYDailynews
