FDNY Covid: “Different Not Better”
15 other unions reach a settlement with NYC
NYC municipal unions representing 95,000 employees cut a deal with the City to come into line with the Covid-19 vaccine mandate.
Neither FDNY union, IAFF’s 854 or 94, are among them.
Paint roller in hand and the corner getting ever smaller, 854’s president Jim McCarthy, explained why: fire and police are “different.”
Can we talk union strategy, or the lack, thereof?
They are handling Covid as if it were about choosing the color of turnouts or rigs.
It’s not.
The disease struck the citizens of New York with a sledgehammer: 34,621 have died.
“Different” ain’t cutting it with the public.
Unions do not have the right to extend the pandemic to be different.
It’s a bone-headed and tone deaf position.
They need to be part of the community and to be seen as such, sharing the burden.
And to fire up the metaphors again, 854 and 94 are sawing off the limb behind them for a declining minority (19%) of their members, as more and more get the vaccine.
So the campaign is bad politics internally and externally.
Ninety-two percent of City employees are now vaccinated making the idea of a special FDNY deal by the Mayor ever smaller.
At FDNY, the squeaky wheel really does get the grease even if the axle falls off in the process.
In a bizarre example of mixed messaging, IAFF president Ed Kelly is backing the New York debacle even as 69 IAFF members are listed as dying from Covid-19, the actual total is likely more.
They are acting like a bunch of two-year-old’s when lives are at stake.
At this age, expect big feelings, tantrums, simple sentences, pretend play, independence…” (raisingchildren.net.au)
FDNY/IAFF members have damaged their reputation with the public and Ed Kelly has shown he panders when he should be leading.
And it’s all for ego, vanity and power, as the public has pointed out.
