Trash Piles Up On Upper East Side As Vaccine Mandates Take Effect

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Garbage has piled up on the Upper East Side in recent days, amid a slowdown in sanitation services coinciding with the newly imposed vaccination mandate for city workers, according to residents and 311 data.

Since last Monday, residents have made 39 complaints to 311 about missed trash pickups on the Upper East Side, according to city records. That's more than triple the complaints made the previous week, when just 11 were filed.

"It’s a mess," said Andrew Fine, vice president of the East 86th Street Association, who has documented several overflowing trash cans on Twitter.

The deadline for city workers to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination was Friday afternoon. On Monday, workers who had not gotten a shot were put on unpaid leave.

In the days before the mandate took effect, New Yorkers began complaining of missed garbage pickups. Initially most prevalent in Staten Island and south Brooklyn, the trend has since spread to Manhattan neighborhoods, according to 311 data.

Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested last week the trend was caused by workers staying home to express opposition to the mandate. On Monday, Sanitation Commissioner Ed Grayson vowed that pickups would resume a normal schedule by later that afternoon.

Fine said the Upper East Side pileups were especially bad on the busy avenue blocks. In some cases, building maintenance workers or groups like the Doe Fund had piled up garbage bags next to overfilled cans to mitigate the problem, but such solutions could only do so much.

"Those cans that don’t have a good samaritan looking after them are spilling all over the place," Fine said.

As of Sunday, 82 percent of Sanitation workers had gotten at least one vaccine dose — a 20 percent increase since Oct. 19, but still the sixth-lowest of any city agency.

Despite the hiccups in agencies like Sanitation and the FDNY, De Blasio's administration has touted the mandates for managing to compel thousands of city workers to get their shots. Some agencies, he noted Monday, had seen double-digit percentage-point increases in vaccination status leading up to this week.

In total, 91 percent of city workers had gotten vaccinated by Monday, while about 9,000 people were put on unpaid leave this week for failing to get their shots, de Blasio said.

Have an Upper East Side news tip? Email reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.