Most City Workers are Back at Work: Only 2,600, on Leave without Pay After Vaccine Mandate

By Yehudit Garmaise

The number of city employees who refused vaccination who are on leave without pay today was 2,600: coming down significantly from the 9,000 city workers who did not want to get vaccinated on Nov. 1, when the mandate first went into effect. 

"To keep serving the public, they made the decision to come in and get vaccinated," Mayor Bill de Blasio said of the city’s workforce, which numbers close to 400,000: 93% of whom are already vaccinated. "Since the announcement of the mandate, there have been nearly 28,000 new vaccinations in the city's workforce, and since the Nov. 1 deadline past, 8,000 more city workers have gotten vaccinated."

While continuing to work, 12,400 city workers have submitted “reasonable accommodation requests” that would excuse them from the mandate. 

The process to review the religious and medical accommodation requests will continue in the coming days and weeks, said the mayor, who added that it “will take some time, and they all have to be processed individually.”

If the mandates are denied, they can be appealed.

“But everyone [who has requested accommodations] keeps working in the meantime,” explained the mayor. “What we saw with our healthcare workers, our education employees, and the city agencies, is that most people, when they don’t get the accommodation, they then go to get vaccinated.

“If they do get the accommodation [granted], then they keep working in the right way. If someone does not get the accommodation, the overwhelming likelihood is then they get vaccinated."

As with the city’s healthcare and education workers, some of those accommodations will be approved, and a good number will not be, said the mayor, who added, “Then workers will have the choice to get vaccinated and come back to work, and I expect most people are going to ultimately make the decision to get vaccinated.

To the city's workers who have not yet gotten their shots and returned to work, the mayor said, "We need you. Let's move forward together."

The mandates, the mayor said, have made everyone safe.

They are encouraging people to come visit, office workers to come back to their offices, and a lot of other progress,” said the mayor, who insisted that New York City is the “safest place to be in American right now because we have the highest level of vaccination, including in our workforce.”

Today, 12,178,451 doses have been administered in the city, announced the mayor.

“This is why people are coming back in droves to New York City: that number, and that number is going to grow.”

(Darren McGee- Office of Formor Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)