Trash is piling up around New York City as 17 percent of sanitation engineers refused to be vaccinated after mandates took effect on Monday.
“A steady stream of trucks pulled into a sanitation garage on Staten Island. On a good week, the city crews pick up roughly 12,000 tons of trash each day in residential areas. But this was a bad week,” ABC 7 reported Monday.
Trash piled up, and city officials admitted there was a “gap” in service as time ran out for Monday’s deadline to receive a coronavirus vaccine.
That is what it looked like in Gramercy Park on Sunday, minutes before crew members, who usually take the day off, cleaned up.
“We are continuing to make up for the backlogged service, we believe we will be day on day, meaning Monday material only at some point today,” New York City Department of Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson told the outlet.
The Sanitation Department said 83 percent of employees are vaccinated. Some of those who are not vaccinated gathered to protest outside the facility located on Richmond Avenue.
“We’re being forced to do something against our will,” sanitation worker Michael Cancelleri stated.
He has been on the job for 17 years and, for the first time, is on unpaid leave along with thousands of additional city workers who have decided to fight the mandate.
“I’m scared I’m going to lose a job that I love more than anything, a job that puts food on our table, on my family’s table,” Cancelleri explained.
Trash sits uncollected on the sidewalk near a protest against the coronavirus vaccine mandate intended for municipal workers at Gracie Mansion on October 28, 2021, in New York City. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
Nancy Pilardi, who works in banking, also insisted she was not going to be vaccinated.
“I’m a survivor of domestic violence and 8 years ago I took back my freedom to leave my abuser and they’re not going to take my freedom of choice, I won’t,” Pilardi maintained.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced recently that approximately 9,000 city workers were placed on unpaid leave for declining to comply with the coronavirus vaccine mandate.
Meanwhile, video footage showed workers dumping trash outside the mayor’s residence.
“This is what’s gonna happen. Monday there was 12, 15,000 real New Yorkers that were out there that are sick of this. These are the real New Yorkers. Without them this city is nothing, okay? Let this shit happen. This is insanity,” one man told reporters.
“This is insanity, and I plead with the mayor, go back to the testing. Everything was fine and safe with the testing,” he said. “This vaccine mandate is gonna kill this city because there’s a lot of men and women that work for this city that are not getting vaxed, whether it’s religious, or health, or immunity. It’s ridiculous.”