Politics on the Hudson

   The Public Employees Federation, a union representing 59,000 state employees, was granted a temporary restraining order today on New York’s mandate that certain health-care workers get vaccines for seasonal and H1N1 influenza by Nov. 30 or face potential loss of their jobs.

   This is the first time the state has required that health-care workers get flu vaccinations, and New York is the only state mandating the shots.

   About 5,000 of the union’s 15,000 health-care workers are covered by the mandate.

   Until this year, seasonal flu shots were strongly urged but voluntary. After the H1N1 flu hit New York in the spring, the state Hospital Review and Planning Council voted to mandate vaccines for both. The rule applies to health-care workers in hospitals and clinics and those who work for home-care programs.

   The lawsuit was filed this morning in state Supreme Court in Albany.

   “This is about our right to make a choice,” PEF Nurses Committee Chairwoman Doris Dodson, a registered nurse, said in a statement.

   “The (state health) commissioner’s regulation has done more to decrease participation in vaccination and created an unhealthy atmosphere in the workplace,” she said.

   PEF is the first professional group in the state that has filed a complaint against the regulation.

   Suzanne Field, a LaGrange, Dutchess County, nurse filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on the issue. Albany attorney Terence Kindlon said he plans to file a lawsuit Monday on behalf of four local nurses who are opposed to the shots.

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