‘This is unbelievable’: NYC business owners denounce de Blasio’s private sector vaccine mandate

New York City business owners have lashed out at Mayor Bill de Blasio, who blindsided them by announcing a citywide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the private sector as they already buckle under the strain of a labor shortage. 

On Monday, de Blasio announced that all 184,000 private sector employees must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by December 27, with no option to test out. 

Small business owners say it will put even more strain on them as they try to keep their existing workers, particularly companies with fewer than 10 workers. 

Alex Yonatanov, who owns the Ace of Bladez barbershop in downtown Manhattan, said he’s been vaccinated but his only other employee has not had the shot.

‘If the person doesn’t want to take the vaccine, you lose the employee. Either way there’s a shortage of employees right now. This is unbelievable. If he does that mandate, we’re gonna lose more employees,’ he told DailyMail.com at his shop on Monday.

Another barber, Luiis Concha, owner of Well Kept Barbershop in Queen said: ‘I’m not too happy with it. Now employees are gonna lose money. I’ll have to let go of people and things like that – it’s just overall bad for business.’

The bombshell vaccine mandate – announced just four days before most private sector employees knock off for the holidays – will begin on December 27, though the mayor says more information will be available on the initiative on December 15. 

The city also previously required at least one dose for employees and customers aged 12 and up at indoor dining, fitness and entertainment facilities.

That group, which now includes children as young as 5, must get a second dose by December 27. Meanwhile, office workers and other private sector employees have until the same date to get their first mandatory shot. 

There is no test-out option, and remote workers are not required to get the jab. 

Business owners told DailyMail.com that while many of them have already complied with the city’s ‘Key to NYC’ rules announced in August, they believe the new rules represent an overreach from a lame-duck mayor that may end up hurting the economy.

At least 80% of all adults in New York City are fully vaccinated. It’s not clear how many vaccinated New Yorkers make up the workforce.

 ‘Omicron is here, and it looks like it’s very transmissible,’ de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC on Monday morning. ‘The timing is horrible with the winter months.’  

It’s unclear how de Blasio plans to enforce the mandate, or whether NYC Mayor-Elect Eric Adams – who is set to take office in January – will keep the rule in place. 

A spokesman for Adams, who is in Ghana, said that: ‘The mayor-elect will evaluate this mandate and other Covid strategies when he is in office and make determinations based on science, efficacy and the advice of health professionals.’  

The owner of the Ace of Bladez barbershop in Manhattan, above, said the new rules were bad news for the economy. ‘There’s a shortage of employees right now. This is unbelievable’

Employees at indoor dining and entertainment establishments have already had to be vaccinated since August.  The manager of Giovanni’s in the Bronx, above, said he wasn’t too worried about the mandate

Seventy percent of NYC residents are fully vaccinated. Nearly 78 percent have one dose, according to city data

Many businesses are still complaining that they can’t find enough workers during the pandemic-era economic recession, with some worrying that the extra rules will shrink an already small pool of applicants. 

Seventy percent of New York City residents are fully vaccinated with the double-shot Pfizer or Moderna or one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Nearly 78 percent have one dose, according to city data.

Of those, 89.2% of all adults have had at least one dose, and 80% of all adults are fully vaccinated. 

De Blasio cited the Omicron variant, which led to a travel ban of eight southern African nations, as a reason for the extra push. 

‘Omicron is here, and it looks like it’s very transmissible,’ he said in an interview on MSNBC. ‘The timing is horrible with the winter months.’ 

Public employees in New York City are already subject to a vaccine mandate, but business groups expressed opposition to similar rules for the private sector.

Kathryn Wylde, head of the business group Partnership for NYC, blasted the mayor’s announcement.

‘There’s no forewarning, no discussion, no idea about whether it’s legal or who he expects to enforce it,’ Kathryn Wylde, the head of business group Partnership for NYC, told the New York Post. ‘There’s been no consultation.’

‘We were blindsided,’ Wylde said. ‘It’s unclear by what authority the mayor is doing this.’

De Blasio estimated that the new vaccine mandate – targeting children ages 5 to 12 and all private sector employees – will affect 184,000 private businesses. 

He said during a Monday press conference that the mandate will apply to in-person employment, with any place with more than one employee on-site subject to it, and there will be no testing opt-out option.

John A. Catsimatidis, the CEO and Chairman of Red Apple Group, which operates the grocery stores Gristedes and D’Agostino throughout the city, says his employees should have a choice.

‘I don’t see it impacting [business],’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘By the time he’ll enforce it, he won’t be mayor.’

In the Bronx, Alex Paval, manager of Italian restaurant Giovanni’s, said his staff was already in compliance with the vaccine mandate imposed on restaurant workers back in August.

‘Our staff is already fully vaccinated,’ he said, adding that he wasn’t too worried about the mandate’s possible effect.  

The owner of Well Kept Barbershop in Queens told DailyMail.com: ‘Now employees are gonna lose money. I’ll have to let go of people and things like that – it’s just overall bad for business.’

‘I don’t see it impacting [business],’ the CEO of the group that owns local grocery store chain Gristedes told DailyMail.com. ‘By the time he’ll enforce it, he won’t be mayor’

Cynthia, an employee at a Midtown marketing firm who refused to share her last name due to fear of blowback, told the Post that the new requirement is ‘another reason’ to leave the city.

‘Just terrific. Bill de Blasio just gave me another reason I need to get the hell out of New York, or at least find a job that lets me work remotely,’ she said.

‘I work in the private sector and had really hoped until just now that it would stay private, but that’s not the case. I can’t live like this. It’s really disappointing.

‘I hope the new mayor has the compassion and good sense to overturn this.’

Republican elected officials joined in on the chorus of disapproval. 

‘Mayor de Blasio can’t leave fast enough. He has crushed small business, the economy and quality of life. How many more New Yorkers does he want to see move to the free state of Florida?’ said US Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents Staten Island and Brooklyn.

‘I’m hopeful the incoming mayor will roll back these arbitrary mandates,’ said US Rep. Lee Zeldin, who represents Long Island and ran for governor this year.

On Monday morning, de Blasio told MSNBC’S Morning Joe: ‘We in New York City have decided to use a pre-emptive strike to really do something bold to stop the further growth of Covid and the dangers it’s causing to all of us.’  

The city is among those with the strictest Covid mandates in the nation already.

De Blasio said that he is making this move expecting a combination of factors to cause another Covid surge in the near future.

‘We’ve got Omicron as a new factor, we’ve got the colder weather which is really gonna create additional challenges with the Delta variant, we’ve got holiday gatherings,’ he said.

During a news conference Monday, he said that previous mandates were a great success with little downside. He also said he expects his mandate to survive potential legal challenges. 

Helen Rella, head of the employment law department at Wilk Auslander, a New York based law firm, said that the mandate will likely withstand legal challenge, though things will remain unclear until more details come out on December 15.

Rella says that since the directive is coming through the city’s department of health, which has the authority to put mandates in place to protect public health, it is within the mayor’s power to do this. 

New York City business leaders are shocked by the sudden move by the outgoing mayor. 

The city was averaging nearly 1,600 new Covid cases every day when data was last updated on November 30, a jump of around 25 percent from the 1,200 case daily average from two weeks earlier.

Colder months have been unkind to New York during the pandemic as well.

Both summer Covid surges that struck much of the nation in 2020 and 2021 did not make much noise in New York City.

The first pandemic wave, in early 2020, was disastrous, though, as the city was caught off-guard by the novel virus – reaching over 8,000 new cases per day at some points.

Last winter, Covid struck again, rising new daily cases to over 6,000 at some points during another massive surge.

With cases already trending upwards, and a new variant to worry about, officials are fearing this winter could be a replay of the last.

The Omicron variant was first discovered in late November by South African health officials, and has quickly been sequenced across the world in recent weeks.

New York City has already emerged as an Omicron hotspot, just as it did with the first wave of the virus. 

Seven Omicron cases have been detected in the city as of Monday morning, accounting for almost all of the state’s eight cases, and reaching a higher total than anywhere else in America.

One case detected in Minnesota was also in a man who had recently traveled to New York City for an anime convention.  

De Blasio said Monday that cases would likely rise in the near future. 

‘You can expect community spread, you have to assume its widespread,’ de Blasio said at a press conference.

De Blasio, who leaves office at the end of the month and has indicated he may seek the nomination for governor of New York next year, has sought to portray himself as a national leader in the fight against COVID-19. 

Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of Long Island, who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor, called the newly announced vaccine requirement a ‘job-killing, small business-suppressing mandate.’

‘When you dangerously combine a far-left, lame duck politician, who is anti-business, one-dimensional, unaccountable, not bright and has a perpetual `I always know best´ attitude,’ you get Bill de Blasio, the Worst Mayor in America,’ Zeldin said in a statement. 

‘We’re going to have some other measures as well to really focus of maximizing vaccination quickly so we can get ahead of Omicron, and all the other challenges we’re facing right now with Covid,’ he told MSNBC.

De Blasio’s indoor dining mandate will be the first to affect children as young as five.

The five to 11 age group was not eligible for the Covid vaccine until regulators authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for them in late November.

According to official data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccine uptake among the age group remains low.

Only 17 percent of children five to 11 have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and less than five percent are fully vaccinated.

The mandate would keep a large majority of children in New York City from taking part in some activities unless vaccine demand among parents greatly changes in the coming weeks.  

While many local and state governments allow for private businesses to have their own vaccination requirements, government enforced vaccine requirements for indoor activities are relatively rare.

Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle are among the small group of cities to have these types of restrictions in place, though none of them affect children under the age of 12.

The federal government is also trying to institute a vaccine mandate on to private sector employees, with President Joe Biden announcing in early November that all companies with over 100 employees would be forced to implement a vaccine mandate by regulators.

Biden’s move has been met with backlash, though, and federal courts have blocked the mandate, calling it government overreach.