Adams’ Betrayal Of Hero Workers
THE COVID-19 pandemic created a grand drama complete with protagonists and antagonists — with some of the heroes, we now learn, seemingly secretly tagged with a “scarlet letter.” The theatrical setting: Americans faced with the unprecedented challenge of battling an invisSible enemy while attempting to walk the balance beam of public safety hoping we wouldn’t descend into the pit of authoritarianism.
New York City’s story arc began with a population terrified of the unknown, held hostage inside their homes by something they couldn’t see. But, despite the danger, many civil servants risked their own and their loved one’s health to continue to fulfill their commitments to the city’s citizens.
They were initially rewarded with hero status, and we were encouraged to applaud their sacrifice daily — until Feb. 14, 2022, when the Adams administration terminated more than 1,400 (later upped to 1,780) government employees, including at the
NYPD and FDNY, for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
A year later, Mayor Adams has removed the decree but refused to reinstate the fired employees, forcing them to reapply, starting over in seniority and pay scale and with no possibility of back pay.
“Nope. Nope. Their back pay is the pay they got when they got another job somewhere. I mean, New Yorkers should not be paying for someone that wasn’t working,” Adams said Friday as the city lifted its mandate.
“You have a right to come back and be employed and file for your job again. But no, there’s not going to be any back pay.”
Labor leaders and lawyers for fired workers vowed to sue for back pay and benefits. “That’s the whole point! They should have been working!” Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association President Harry Nespoli emphatically told The Post.
But the drama just took another turn: Fired school employees who refused the vaccine were given a unique “code,” making it hard to get hired elsewhere, the workers’ lawyer says.
“The employee’s personnel file shows a problem code that could just as easily be committing a crime as declining to take a vaccine for religious reasons. In some instances, when plaintiffs tried to obtain employment elsewhere, they were told that they were red flagged because of the problem code,” John Bursch told The Post Tuesday.
“Loosely speaking, it is like a scarlet letter.”
What’s especially interesting about this plotline is the villainous government’s head used to be one of the community’s servants until he was corrupted by power; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Years ago, he would have stood shoulder to shoulder with his NYPD brothers and sisters defending their right to not have the government end their livelihoods for not succumbing to its medical demands after years of service.
But he’s long crossed that picket line and become what he would have fought against. His aim to balance fairness and morality has been replaced with balancing political optics and budgets.
Adams callously says he doesn’t want to shell out the back pay for our heroic protagonists because they “got another job” — assuming they were able to find comparatively paid work somewhere else.
The bottom line is these people were wrongfully terminated by the same administration that’s now lifted the mandate.
Adams’ vax-mandate end is an admission of its uselessness and the vaccine’s ineffectiveness in stopping
‘ Adams can promise to “get stuff done,” right.’ but he needs to get stuff
the spread because COVID-19 still exists and isn’t going anywhere.
Our mayoral antagonist knows forcing men and women who’ve performed decades of service to rise in seniority and earnings to reapply unfairly puts them back at the bottom of their earning potential, but that’s the point: His budget comes first.
He’d rather force the unions to spend their dues fighting the city for even a penny of what’s owed to their members than do what everyone knows is the right thing.
To every service member, especially the NYPD: This is who Eric Adams is now. When he shows up to the funeral of one of your fallen brothers or sisters to console their family in front of the cameras, just remember when the cameras were off, he didn’t care about the economic hardship placed upon the families of your policing fraternity when he expeditiously fired hundreds of officers for making a personal health decision.
Adams can promise to “get stuff done,” but he needs to get stuff right. I’m not asking the mayor to do something because he used to be a cop, I’m asking for him to do something because it’s righteous.