Andrew Ansbro: FDNY vaccine ultimatum criticized

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First responders speaking out against vaccine mandates

Uniformed Firefighters Association president Andrew Ansbro discusses the staffing shortages New York fire departments face over vaccine mandates.

Thousands of New York City police officers, firefighters and other municipal workers have been placed on unpaid leave Monday for failing to comply with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s coronavirus vaccine mandate. Andrew Ansbro, the head of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, talked about the issue Monday night on "The Ingraham Angle." 

THOUSANDS OF NYC WORKERS GO ON PAID LEAVE

ANDREW ANSBRO: "When you tell someone they have nine days, nine days to make the decision on vaccination or lose their job, they don't want to work with you. Teachers were given over a month, corrections doesn't have to make this decision until December 1. So once again, the mayor is showing that people that care for criminals have more rights than people that care for the average New Yorker. Now I would just like to go back to the notion that 2,300 firefighters have gone out sick over this. The department doesn't share their numbers with us, but the commissioner of the department actually said today that he believes there's a sickout and it's vaccine-related. And the vast majority of the firefighters that are out sick are unvaccinated. You can't claim that the unvaccinated firefighters are causing a staffing shortage because this morning you were sending them home. So they wouldn't have been working either way. Now, it's no secret that New York City firefighters love their jobs, they continue to work hurt. And when those firefighters we believe were faced with the possibility of losing their jobs, they wanted to document those injuries before they went out the door. He's also not taking into account, those numbers are skewed by the fact that we have firefighters that are always sick and injured from firefighter-related duties even before that. Before this vaccine mandate started we had 16 firefighters out on medical leave, firefighting-related medical leave, for every one firefighter out on COVID leave. One-half of 1% of the fire department is out with COVID."

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