Chase Bank shuts dozens of NYC branches due to Omicron

 Chase Bank has shuttered more than three dozen branches in the Big Apple as the mega-bank struggles with staff shortages and vaccine mandates amid a surge in Omicron.

While the COVID variant has shelved many JP Morgan Chase employees, at least one local pol blamed the bank closures on “prohibitive” city and state mandates that require private-sector workers to be vaccinated before they can show up for a day at the office.

“It doesn’t give business an opportunity to open the front door,” City Councilman Joe Borelli, a Staten Island Republican, told The Post.

“If we want to re-populate our offices in New York, this mandate is a prohibition on many of those people coming back,” Borelli said.

Borelli also took to Twitter Wednesday to make his point, posting a photo of the laminated signs that adorn many closed branches.

“I don’t think the mandates are working in #nyc,” he wrote.

“Our branch is temporarily closed due to New York City’s COVID-19 Workplace Vaccination Order,” the sign on the door of one branch reads.

Councilman Joe Borelli blamed the staffing issues on the city’s and state’s vaccine mandate.

William Farrington

Recently departed Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the vaccine mandate last year, with the measure going into effect on Dec. 27 — just days before the end of his term.

Mayor Eric Adams said just hours into his first term that he would continue de Blasio’s emergency measures, including indoor vaccine mandates.

A spokesman for JP Morgan Chase said Wednesday that “a small portion” of the financial giant’s locations in the five boroughs would close due to the vaccine mandate and said some branches in the New York Metro area also had staff shortages.

But, Chase Vice President of Regional Communications Briana Curran added that, “If they are closed in NYC it is due to the vaccine mandate.”

Curran would not provide a list of all the local shuttered branches, but a survey of branch locations listed on Chase’s website show that at least 11 of 37 Bronx locations are currently closed, as are at least 21 of 67 Brooklyn branches.

Two of nine Staten Island sites are also closed.

Some are blaming the city’s vaccine mandate on the closures.

Getty Images

Chase announced on Dec. 14 that employees at its corporate offices would be prohibited from going into the building unless they were vaccinated.

The mandate has nonetheless sparked blowback from the city’s business community.

This week, a Staten Island law firm filed a federal class-action lawsuit seeking an injunction on the mandate targeting private businesses, calling it “overreaching and meddling” into the private sector.

Mark Fonte, an attorney with F&G Legal Group, told The Post Wednesday that more than 100 companies in the five boroughs had already joined the lawsuit.

“This is seeking to put the government back in its place and keep it in its proper lane, out of the offices of private businesses,” Fonte said.

JP Morgan Chase is not one of those companies, he noted.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/05/chase-bank-shuts-dozens-of-nyc-branches-due-to-omicron/