NEW YORK (PIX11) — Less than a week after lifting the vaccine mandate for New York City employees, Mayor Eric Adams is looking for creative ways that would allow some civil servants to work remotely.
The city will be sending surveys to various agencies to come up with a fair plan that would accommodate police officers and nurses, who have to be on the job, and administrative staff, Adams said Tuesday at an unrelated event in Queens.
“What do we do for the people who can’t work from home? What do I do to my school crossing guard, my nurse, my doctor? What do I do for the police officers? How do we make sure that we don’t create a two-tier system where some can work from home and others cannot?” Adams said.
The mayor also suggested there could be some extra benefits for workers with non-office jobs.
“So we want as a team to say, how do I look out for my fellow civil servant to say you have to come in, so how do we compensate you in some way? And that is what we need to do,” Adams said.
Last year, Adams was adamant about getting workers back in the office full-time because it was adversely affecting the city’s economy during the pandemic.
“That is going to be devastating for our economy, and I don’t know if businesses are sharing with their employees, ‘You are part of an ecosystem of this city,’” the mayor previously said.
The mayor, however, is not publicly supporting either remote or office work as of yet, according to a City Hall source.
Last week, Adams lifted the vaccine mandate for city employees, but the nearly 2,000 workers who were fired for not getting the shot would not automatically get their jobs back.
