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**JULY 29, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

Unions and Vaccines: When Rights and Rights Collide

The decision of President Biden and various governors and mayors to
require governmental employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or
submit to regular COVID testing has left American unions befuddled.

On one hand, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has said he favors the mask
mandates, responding

to a questioner on C-SPAN by saying, "If you come back and you're
not vaccinated, everybody in that workplace is jeopardized." And while
a number of unions have lodged objections to the mandates unless they
emerge from a union-management negotiation, the International Federation
of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents 25,000 workers
at the Defense Department and NASA, has embraced them. I guess that's
what happens when a majority of your members actually understands and
respects science.

Would that were the case across the larger workforce. A slew of police
and security unions have objected

to the vaccine-or-testing mandates. President Biden's new order has
met with objections from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers
Association, whose president has predicted "a lot of pushback; it's
going to be an avalanche" from members at the Departments of Justice
and Homeland Security. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's similar mandate
has received cries of outrage from the city's unions of firefighters
and paramedics. However, the city's largest municipal union, AFSCME
District Council 37, has met with de Blasio's office and,

**The New York Times**reports
,
may be satisfied that its voice has been heard and the mandate can go
ahead.

Other left-leaning public-sector unions, including the Postal Workers
and the American Federation of Teachers, have also said they need to
consult with the relevant governmental officials to craft a plan
acceptable to their members. Endeavoring to balance the concerns of her
largely vaccinated members with those of her vaccine-resistant members,
and her union's concern to stop the pandemic (and open schools) with
her union's duty to oppose imposed mandates, AFT President Randi
Weingarten said, "We believe strongly that everyone should get
vaccinated unless they have a medical or religious exception, and that
this should be a mandatory subject of negotiation for employers to keep
their employees safe and build trust."

Given their disproportionately right-wing tilt, members of policing
unions have some of the lowest rates of vaccination. The NYPD has
administered vaccines-for free-to just 43 percent of New York's
finest, while the rate for the city's jailers is a bare 33 percent.
Even more disturbing is the resistance from paramedics. Nothing like
riding in an ambulance with an unvaccinated med tech trying to
resuscitate you.

The problem underlying these unions' position is that they have
conflicting mandates. One is to ensure their members' rights are not
circumvented by dictates from on high. The other-which some unions,
apparently, don't seem to realize is literally lifesaving as the
ultra-infectious delta variant rips through the land-is the old labor
adage that an injury to one is an injury to all. Don't call Joe Biden
or Gavin Newsom or Bill de Blasio anti-union because he clings to that
latter credo.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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