Employers are also concerned that the vaccine mandate will deter people from returning to the office for work.
Gov. Kathy Hochul recently called on business leaders to join her in making a New Year’s resolution to bring employees back to offices for in-person work after New Year’s Day. But with the omicron variant moving through the population with uncertain health consequences, the mayor’s vaccine mandate could hasten a sense of panic among firms and push them toward maintaining the work-from-home status quo, some business groups said.
“You’re going to see a lot of employers throw up their hands and say, ‘We’ll sit this out for a couple of months,’” said Rob Byrnes, president of the East Midtown Partnership. “It’s going to slow down a lot of the return we’re looking for.”
A recent study by the Partnership for New York City, conducted before the emergence of the omicron variant, showed that many workers are hesitant to return to offices either on a full- or part-time basis. Only 28% of Manhattan office workers are in an office building on a typical weekday, according to the study, and less than 10% are in offices five days per week.
Perhaps most revealing about the current mood: One-third of New York employers expect to rent less office space in the next five years, the study said.
Byrnes argued that rather than fire valuable employees who remain unvaccinated, businesses may just ask them to continue working from home, so long as that option is allowed within the mayor’s impending rules.
“It’s going to put a lot of people in a bad position with those who have trusted employees who are vaccine-resistant,” he said. “You’re going to see a lot of blowback from private-sector employers and employees.”
Others point out that a majority of New York City’s population is already vaccinated and that asking for a full dose or an additional shot is unlikely to create a vast upheaval in the private-sector workforce. Roughly 90% of New York City adults have received at least one dose and nearly 82% are fully vaccinated, according to city data. Furthermore, many firms—both large and small—have already implemented a vaccine mandate on their own as a prerequisite for employment.
The Brooklyn Running Company, a retail business with 25 employees, instituted a vaccination mandate for employees in September and didn’t experience much resistance, co-founder Matthew Rosetti said.
“The team has been wonderful in terms of their compliance and forthrightness and acceptance of this policy,” he said. “It’s created what we feel to be a safer health and work environment for our staff and our customers.”
This coupling of proof of vaccination to employment could be the type of variable de Blasio is counting on for his new employer mandate.
“This really isn’t a problem with the private-sector workforce,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City. “He’s mandating a population that basically isn’t a spreader population and is largely vaccinated.”
But Wylde noted that it remained unclear how the mandate would conflict with privacy and health care laws.
De Blasio seemed confident during a news conference that the mandate would hold up in court. He may be aided by a precedent set in April 2019, Goodman said. At the time, measles infections had broken out in some city neighborhoods. The mayor ordered that every person age 6 months or older, in specific ZIP codes, receive a measles vaccine or face a $1,000 fine, Goodman said, adding that the mayor’s authority to issue such an order is found in the New York City Charter.
“It comes down to the New York City Charter that gives the city Health Department authority to regulate,” Goodman said. “I think they probably have the authority. It’s in there.”
This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crain’s New York Business.