By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – City workers here who have not yet taken COVID-19 vaccinations have until Sept. 16 to make a choice that can affect employment status.
That choice is to get fully vaccinated and show proof thereof on or before that Thursday – or risk termination.
Mayor Ras Baraka had started that clock running effectively on Aug. 16 with his Aug. 9-issued executive order. That order, internally released among the city’s personnel channels, requires employees to show proof of examination to their department head from Sept. 16 onward.
Employees also have to show their department heads weekly copies of negative COVID test results. This is a distinction from the either/or vaccination or weekly testing choice that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and most other mayors have directed their workforce.
Those who choose to vaccinate have either the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna inoculations or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson inoculation. Either way, Mayor Baraka wants city workers to be fully vaccinated on or before Sept. 16.
Proof of vaccination and weekly tests are to be offered up every Tuesday. Only results from Polymerase Chain Reaction tests, not the rapid tests, will be accepted.
Employees will take their own vaccinations and tests on their own dime and time. Those who do not furnish their test results will initially be sent home unpaid – and put themselves on a path towards termination.
Baraka’s administrators will allow individual exemptions on certified medical or religious grounds. Other reasons for non-vaccination – from waiting for full FDA testing and/or approval to freedom of personal choice to anti-vaxxers’ conspiracy theories – are not going to cut it with the department heads.
The above is to the understanding of “Local Talk” as of press time. Executive Order MEO-21-0008 has not been directly posted on the City of Newark website. Its existence became public when a copy was found by a media outlet Aug. 14.
The mayor, who has been on the COVID containment forefront since March 2020, cited rising infections from COVID-19’s Delta variant and growing hospitalizations among the unvaccinated for this order.
“Requiring our municipal workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine is about protecting the health and well-being of our municipal team, (and) our families as well as the residents and visitors they come into contact with,” said Baraka. “As positive coronavirus cases are rising again, due to the highly contagious Delta variant, we need to take whatever steps necessary to safeguard and ensure everyone’s safety.”
Baraka’s order was written eight days after Gov. Phil Murphy his own executive order that workers in “high-risk congregate settings” be vaccinated or take weekly tests. Murphy’s Aug. 2 executive orders those who work in hospitals, public and private healthcare centers, prisons and other places of high contact.
Murphy (D-Rumson) has given the above employees Sept. 7 to vaccinate or get weekly tested.
Both Baraka and Murphy may base their orders on a March 22 N.J. Department of Health and Senior Services ruling where an employer may require residents to be COVID-19-vaccinated before entering a workplace. (Religious, disability and pregnant/breastfeeding exemptions are to be honored.)
Newark, New Jersey, New York City and State have worked to get their populations to 70-percent fully inoculated into this summer. While New Jersey reached 70 percent, Newark, East Orange, Irvington and Orange have struggled to rise above the 40th percentile.
Those reluctant to vaccinate include demographic groups who are skeptical of the medical profession – some remember The Tuskegee Experiment – and those who “wait-and-see.” There are medical professionals and employees who have a 50-percent full vaccination rate.
This order includes members of civilian and uniform union members. There had been first responder representatives who have said their members are 50-percent fully vaccinated.
Some union members have been asking their shop stewards or representatives: “Can the Mayor do this? Does this violate our contract?”
“We stand behind a vaccine and/or a choice of being tested,” said Newark Firefighters Union President Chuck West Aug. 14. “When you put in the fact that you’ll be disciplined for not having it, that’s where we have some problems.”
“We feel that we were not negotiated with and this is hasty,” said Newark Fire Officers Union No. 191 President Anthony Tarantino. “We have not been able to discuss the impact from this order.”
“We demand to negotiate over the impact issues,” said Newark Police Superior Officers Association President Capt. John J. Crystal III. “We want to sit down and work this out with the city, but the mayor just issued the order without any input, without any negotiations with any of the unions.
But has Baraka’s clock been frozen for police officers and firefighters?
The New Jersey Public Employee Relations Commission issued a temporary restraint on Baraka’s executive order Monday on behalf of the said labor unions. That clock may remain frozen until that commission holds a hearing on or before Aug. 31.
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees New Jersey Council 63 has meanwhile announced that Gov. Murphy’s office will hold a meeting with them regarding his Aug. 2 order
