Since lifting the private employer vaccine requirement for professional athletes and performers based in New York City on Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams has drawn the ire of city employees, their unions and others who still must adhere to the mandate or lose their jobs.
The Police Benevolent Association, the largest police union in the city, is one of several unions that have criticized the mayor’s decision. In a statement on Thursday, Patrick J. Lynch, president of the union, said the exemption is a double standard.
“If the mandate isn’t necessary for famous people, then it’s not necessary for the cops who are protecting our city in the middle of a crime crisis,” Mr. Lynch said, adding that officers continued working throughout the pandemic, risking their health and contracting Covid-19, and “don’t deserve to be treated like second-class citizens now.”
It is estimated that more than 1,500 public employees in New York City have lost their jobs because they did not abide by the vaccine mandate.
The United Federation of Teachers, a powerful teachers’ union in the city, similarly denounced the change in policy, underlining the appearance of granting special treatment for some.
“If the rules are going to be suspended, particularly for people with influence, then the UFT and other city unions are ready to discuss how exemptions could be applied to city workers,” the U.F.T. wrote in a post on Twitter.
Kate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity, a labor union representing theater actors and stage managers, said that the announcement came as a surprise. Currently, performing arts venues around New York City, including Broadway theaters and the Metropolitan Opera, have a vaccine requirement in place that they intend to keep — regardless of the mayor’s announcement.
Still, writing on Twitter, Ms. Shindle raised concerns around unvaccinated performers and other artists working in an environment where people are in close contact with one another, often unmasked, and drew attention to performers who do not have union support to negotiate safe workplaces.
“While this is a challenging needle to thread, it’s a solvable problem,” Ms. Shindle wrote. “But that means collaboration *before* stripping a layer of protection from middle-class arts workers, many of whom have also lost health insurance because Covid made work impossible.”
Mr. Adams has said he made the decision based on conversations with his team of public health experts, lawyers and economic advisers and is another step in the city’s return to normalcy. He added that it also addressed an aspect of the policy that he deemed unfair because the requirement did not apply to out-of-state teams or performers.
In responding to a question at a news conference on Friday about whether the change will lead to lawsuits, Mr. Adams re-emphasized the role his legal team played in the decision and said those who feel they were treated unfairly had the court system as a recourse.
The policy change comes as coronavirus cases have risen 31 percent over the last two weeks in New York City, with the BA.2 subvariant accounting for about a third of cases, though hospitalizations are down.
The exemption clears the way for the Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving, who has refused to get vaccinated, and Aaron Judge, the Yankees outfielder who has declined to reveal his vaccination status, to play in home games. The first home game at Barclays Center for the Nets in which Irving would be eligible to play is Sunday.