Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Dec. 1 vaccination mandate for Department of Correction staff looms large over the city’s jails.
The largely black and Hispanic DOC workforce still lags significantly behind other uniformed services: Only 63 percent — and only 57 percent of 8,400 jail guards — have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine.
If thousands of correction officers remain noncompliant, the turmoil at the 400-acre jail complex on Rikers Island could take another turn for the worse.
Union honcho Benny Boscio told The Post that the mandate will make staffing worse in city jails. He insists that jail staff “deserve the right to free choice” on getting jabbed.
Huh? Guards work in enclosed spaces with lots of different people. Being unvaccinated puts inmates and colleagues — and themselves — at risk. Plus, it’s hypocrisy for guards to not come into work claiming health concerns and then reject the vaccine.
For all his “failing” and “systemic mismanagement” cited by the federal monitor overseeing Rikers, which falls squarely on the mayor, de Blasio still has every right to require vaccination of city employees.
Cross your fingers that the correction officers get with the program as their deadline nears, as other public workers did before them. The last thing the city needs is yet another massive de Blasio failure when it comes to New York’s jails.