Skip to main content

New York City’s Coronavirus Vaccine Carve Outs Ruffles Union Feathers


Last Thursday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference in which he announced that professional sports players, entertainers, musicians, and DJs would not be required to be vaccinated in order to play or perform in New York City.

Readers might recall that New York City enacted one of the most stringent coronavirus vaccine policies in the country which included requirements that New York City athletes, entertainers, musicians, and DJs get the coronavirus vaccine or be barred from playing or performing in the city.  New York City’s coronavirus vaccine policy also required many public and private sector employees to get vaccinated as well or face termination.  (Note, approximately 1,400 public employees were terminated over their failure to get vaccinated.)

While some cheered the Mayor’s decision to ease coronavirus vaccine mandates for certain players and performers, labor unions pushed back and argued these carve outs should exist for unvaccinated public and private sector employees in the city as well.  Critics have argued that at a minimum, police and firefighters should be afforded the same exception provided to athletes and performers, given the necessity of having these public workers on the job.

For the time being, this carve out has not been extended beyond last Thursday’s announcement.  Can organized labor in the city assert its influence and get the Mayor to institute another carve out for public and private sector employees?  I would be curious to find out.


For additional information:  https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/3/24/22995486/adams-kyrie-irving-carve-out-nyc-unions-workers-angry

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum,...

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies i...

What I've Been Reading This Week

Recently, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Commissioner, Chai Feldblum, had her re-nomination on the brink, after Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee took steps to block it .  Readers might have heard that late last week, Commissioner Feldblum's re-nomination quietly slipped away and she tweeted out a thank you to supporters and friends, acknowledging that her time at the EEOC was over.  While there has not been much in the way of a further update in regard to that ongoing saga, we wait to see how things will play out at the EEOC, now that it has lost a quorum until additional Commissioners are confirmed by the Senate. For the time being, there are other developments for readers to review this week.  In particular, I call attention to the article on managing a wage & hour audit by the Department of Labor as well as steps an employer can take to better ensure compliance with the ADA. As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week. ...