DC 37, Local 3005, AFSCME, “Administrative Public Health Nurses”, “Associate Chemists”, “City Research Scientists”, “Criminalists”, “Scientist, Radiation Control”, “Scientist, Water Ecology”, “Architects”, “Assistant Architects”, “Civil Engineers”, and “Construction Project Managers”, all classified as essential healthcare workers of and during the COVID pandemic, whom are employed by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner were mostly excluded from any benefit of the recently passed Healthcare Worker Bonus Program from New York State. Of our approximate 1,000 membership, only 30 qualified when many more should have been.

Our members were providing direct patient care and were either, activated by the New York City’s Incident Command System performing daily inoculations of COVID vaccine to the public, collecting and transporting, by vehicle, potentially positive COVID samples from all hospitals across the City of New York to the New York City Public Health Lab for testing, working daily at the New York City Public Health Lab performing COVID testing on these collected samples from all across the City of New York, analyzing the data from such testing, and reporting the conclusions and associated statistics of any an d all positive and negative COVID cases to New York City Hall and New York State, or re-assigned and working daily in the city morgue transferring the deceased patients, ravaged by COVID 19, assisting devastated family members and re-connecting them to their deceased loved one while working side by side with the National Guard.

We the undersigned request your assistance. We ask that you consider expanding the legislation and increasing the budget to include us, our voting body, and our titles to address this and help us find a remedy to this exclusion and make us whole.