November 5, 2021

New York City and four of the city’s key labor unions have struck a deal on the latest COVID vaccine mandate that reaffirms the city’s right to impose it and ends litigation intended to block it, while making some allowances for employees who filed medical or religious exemption requests by Nov. 2, City Hall said Thursday.

The deal is with DC 37, Teamsters Local 237, the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association Local 831 and SEIU Local 300, which collectively represent about 75,000 public employees, nearly 20% of the city’s 378,000-member workforce.

But it specifically addresses medical and religious exemption filings, roughly 12,000 of which were filed ahead of Monday’s deadline for city workers to prove they had received at least one COVID vaccine dose or be put on unpaid leave. And it excludes workers employed by the Department of Education and NYC Health + Hospitals, for whom the mandate has been in place for more than a month now.

Continue reading at www.nbcnewyork.com.