New York City's next mayor Eric Adams has given the strongest hint yet that he'll reverse Bill de Blasio's widely-criticized vaccine mandate for city workers including firefighters, cops and EMTs.
Adams won yesterday's mayoral election with a landslide 68 percent of the vote over Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa's 28.8 percent.
The former cop doesn't take office until January 1, but he has already vowed to 'reset' the city and restore the faith of the NYPD in City Hall.
On Wednesday morning, after partying the night away at swanky members club Zero Bond then Cipriani's, Adams did the rounds on morning television.
During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, he said: 'The mask mandates we should keep in place because we're doing an amazing job on that.
'And we need to revisit how we address the vaccine mandates. What I'm going to encourage him to do is to sit down with the unions. We can work this out.
'This is a very difficult moment but there's an opportunity to sit down with the unions. I communicated with some of the union leaders yesterday and they are open to sit down.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams (left) told outgoing NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday to 'sit down with the unions' and negotiate the vaccine mandate with more than 26,000 city workers still refusing to get the shots
'I'm going to encourage him to do that, he said.
Adams is a former cop who campaigned on issues like putting more officers back on the streets, reducing overtime and cutting paperwork to allow cops to crack down on crime properly.
His promises have been largely welcomed by the NYPD unions which say de Blasio has betrayed them time and time again, by cutting budgets and imposing bail reforms that put more criminals back on the streets.
The outgoing mayor's most recent act against the emergency services is a sweeping vaccine mandate that came into effect on Monday morning.
Anyone who is unvaccinated but who wants to keep working for the city must file for a religious or medical exemption, get vaccinated or lose their job.
Earlier on Wednesday, de Blasio threatened to fire the firefighters who have called out sick since the mandate took effect, accusing them of faking illness to avoid getting the shots and avoid losing their pay.
As of yesterday, 23 percent of the FDNY's 11,000 firefighters are still not vaccinated and few have been given religious or medical exemptions, meaning 2,530 who haven't had the shots yet cannot report for duty.
2,300 are on sick leave, meaning nearly a third of the force's 11,000 uniformed firefighters aren't on the streets.
People attend a 'Worldwide Walkouts' anti-vaccine mandate protest outside of City Hall, Manhattan, New York. November 03 2021
Department of Sanitation workers were among those at the protest outside City Hall on Wednesday afternoon
