The head of one of the largest municipal unions, Teamsters Local 237, charged Thursday that City Hall is failing to provide its municipal employees with needed masks, gloves and hand sanitizer as they battle the coronavirus.
Greg Floyd — whose union represents 23,000 municipal employees across virtually every city agency — said local Teamsters also haven’t received proper training for how to handle the outbreak.
“Our members serve and protect the public,” Floyd told The Post. “Among the places they work are public schools, food services, public colleges, public housing, homeless shelters, public hospitals and the Administration for Children’s Services.
“How can they be expected, in good conscience, to protect the public, when they are not protected themselves?” he said.
Floyd said that some school safety agents, who are continuing to work as teachers receive in-person training for remote learning, are just getting masks now.
“Not N95 masks, just surgical masks,” he added. “Other members of Local 237, also dealing in areas of large, vulnerable populations, received nothing!” Floyd fumed.
“No wonder the leadership at the Health Department threatened to resign,” he said, referring to reports that health officials were so angry with de Blasio’s micromanagement of the city’s coronavirus response that they threatened to walk off the job.
“It’s inhumane and hypocritical to ask workers to do a job without any thought to their well-being,” Floyd said, adding that on Thursday City Hall officials promised to improve safety measures.
He said that staffers with the New York City Public Housing Authority are also being told to work without protective gear.
“We’ve only known about this since when December?” Floyd said about the first reports for COVID-19 in China.
“Did they think this was going to pass us over?” he said.
A mayoral spokeswoman did not immediately comment.
The Post reported last week that the city distributed expired, half-empty hand sanitizer and a single mask to NYPD officers after their union complained of a lack of coronavirus supplies.
Floyd had previously raised concerns about the lack of sanitary procedures for security officers at city homeless shelters.
