Mayor Eric Adams lets fired anti-vax workers re-apply — but with no back pay or job guarantee

Mayor Eric Adams on Friday let workers who were fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine re-apply for their jobs — but with no back pay, guarantee of jobs or even their previous seniority or specific job assignments.

Unions representing the axed workers quickly responded: See you in court, Mr. Mayor, vowing to sue for those conditions to be met.

“Nope. Nope. Their back pay is the pay they got when they got another job somewhere. I mean, New Yorkers should not be paying for someone that wasn’t working,” Adams said Friday on the Caribbean Power Jam radio show as the city lifted its mandate.

“And now keep in mind, there were some people who applied for city work and were told you have to be vaccinated to get the job. And they took the job with that understanding and still said, ‘No, I don’t want to be vaccinated.’ So no, no,” Adams said.

About 1,780 workers were fired for refusing to get vaccinated. The city did not release figures Friday on how many reapplied for jobs on the first day they could.

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“You have a right to come back and be employed and file for your job again. But no, there’s not going to be any back pay,” Adams said.

Labor leaders and the lawyers for fire workers vowed to sue.

Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association/Teamsters Local 832, said he will file a lawsuit against Adams and the city next week to win back pay and benefits for his members reapplying for their jobs. Twenty-nine sanitation workers were fired for refusing to get vaccinated.

“That’s the whole point! They should have been working!,” Nespoli emphatically told The Post.

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Nespoli, who acknowledged he personally complied and got his COVID-19 shots, said the city shouldn’t take such a hard line because it’s having trouble recruiting workers and many former employees have fled New York.

“They can’t get people to do jobs anymore,” he said.  

There are already several cases in state and federal court that have challenged the legality of the vaccine mandate, and lawyers say back pay is a key issue.

“The first thing that the city’s doing wrong, is they’re saying ‘yes, you could reapply for your job, but you have to waive your civil rights,’” said attorney James Mermigis, who represents more than 200 city employees — predominantly those who worked at the NYPD.

He says that any reinstatement would include restitution for lost pay, lost time for pension eligibility and benefits.

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“A lot of my clients don’t want to start over, they’re 15 years in. We’re going to pursue litigation that ensures my clients are made whole and go back to where they were before the mandate,” Mermigis said.

“We’re not going to stand up and cheer and say hurrah because Eric Adams decided to rescind the mandate. He needs to make these people whole.”

Adams insisted he’s being fair and responsible, citing people he personally knew who died from COVID-19 or became seriously ill.

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 “The goal was not to be punitive, it was to be protective. We had to protect city workers, first line responders, and deal with the crisis that we were facing,” the mayor said.

“This was a very frightening period of time for our city, our country, if not the globe.”

More than 96% of city workers overall got vaccinated.