Public Servants Terminated During COVID
“[T]here’s no higher calling in terms of a career than public service, which is a chance to make a difference in people’s lives and improve the world.”
— Jack Lew, U.S. Ambassador to Israel
To right the wrongs inflected on public servants who refused vaccines on principle during the pandemic, I will rehire them when elected as Mayor.
Amid the struggle to contain the pandemic, the City of New York fired public servants who refused the COVID-19 vaccine. Some had religious objections to being vaccinated. Others were afraid of taking a new vaccine, which they believed whose development and testing had been rushed. Within months of their firing, research showed that vaccines made the infection less severe, but didn’t really prevent transmission.
Many had served the city with distinction for decades. The fired workers included police who had spent years defending our streets. They were school counselors, helping struggling kids isolated during online schooling. They included emergency responders, sanitation workers and office workers.
Carin Rosado was a paramedic with the FDNY who came down with COVID-19 in the summer of 2020, which led to long COVID. She was fired for refusing the vaccine and lost her health insurance. When Rosado lost a subsequent job, she ended up living in her car for months, until a friend in another state took her in.
Carin was one of at least 1,780 City employees wrongly terminated in an abuse of government power. The firings left individuals and their families in distress. And, to add insult to injury,
Mayor Adams kept the vaccine mandate for public workers, when he lifted it the private sector in October 2022.
That month, a state judge ruled that the public-sector terminations were “arbitrary and capricious.” I agree. The city took a heavy-handed approach—one that was arguably in conflict with the law. It generally refused to make religious and medical accommodations. It could have modified requirements for many jobs.
The current mayor winces and whines about being “cancelled” after being indicted for public corruption. Yet, he cancelled city workers who refused vaccines on principle. We should turn the page on this injustice.
Jim Walden,
Candidate for Mayor