After being suspended overnight from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. amid an influx of Staten Island Ferry workers calling out sick, service resumed running hourly at 6 a.m. with the first boat leaving from the St. George Landing Terminal, according to the city.

Typically, the ferries run every 15 minutes during the morning and evening rush.

The city says NYC Ferry will offer increased service to help alleviate the issue, with boats running free of charge directly between lower Manhattan and Staten Island every 10-15 minutes during morning and evening rush hour.

“A significant share of our Staten Island Ferry workforce did not report to work today,” Adams said in a statement Wednesday.

What You Need To Know

  • The mayor blamed a national worker shortage and the currently employed ferry workers for not showing up to work

  • The union representing some ferry workers says its members have not received a pay raise or a new contract in over a decade

  • The NYC Ferry will supplement some service to Staten Island and the MTA said buses between Staten Island and Brooklyn and Manhattan will run more frequently

The city is asking commuters to find alternate ways to get to and from Staten Island, with Adams saying “we are particularly discouraging any non-essential trips at this time.” Announcements at the Manhattan terminal asked tourists not to board to leave room for Staten Island commuters around 6 p.m. Wednesday, but the mayor played down those efforts, claiming they were just redirecting traffic. 

"We're going to use our ferries that carry up to 300 people, our smaller ferries," Adams said from the Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan Wednesday evening. "We're going to use buses. We're going to use everything we have to get people to and from as we deal with this issue that was dropped in our lap today."

The mayor blamed a national worker shortage for the reduced service, but also alleged ferry workers were not showing up to work

“We are saying to the workers who did not come in today: If you are not sick, New Yorkers need you to come to work,” Adams said in the statement. In recent weeks, the Department of Transportation blamed COVID-19 cases for staff shortages and service reductions, but the mayor did not say whether that was a cause of Wednesday's disruptions.

Later at the terminal, when asked if workers were staging a sick-out, Adams said he wasn't sure.

The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association — which represents captains, assistant captains, engineers and mates — is operating under a decade old contract. Roland Rexha, the secretary-treasurer of MEBA and a former Staten Island Ferry worker, said the worker shortage “is completely due to severely overworked and understaffed crews.”

“We have continued to operate service under the most stressful and painful of circumstances while our crew continues to feel the tremendous financial pain and workload stress of the pandemic and its aftermath,” Rexha said in a statement. “The union has no knowledge of any deliberate disruptions of service nor would we endorse any action to slow down this essential service for our beloved Staten Islanders.”

“The only thing ‘sick’ is OLR’s refusal to offer a contract that reflects the highly-skilled and essential work of the ferry officers and mariners,” Rexha added.

Adams pledged to continue to negotiate with the union, but deflected blame.

"From my understanding, which is surprising, the union has been negotiating for about 11 years. So this is something I inherited," Adams said from the terminal.

“We will continue to engage with these ferry workers’ union to reach a voluntary, pattern-conforming agreement in the same way that we have done with virtually all other city unions for these rounds of bargaining,” the mayor said in the release.

Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis called on the mayor to expedite the contract negotiations Wednesday afternoon, noting ferry workers represented by MEBA had not received a pay raise for over a decade.

“These reductions in service are becoming all too common & the city needs to address them as they come at the expense of our mariners & commuters,” the congresswoman tweeted. “I fear that the longer this dispute goes on, the more it will impact operational and passenger safety risks for those I represent.”

The mayor said the NYC Ferry service will offer free trips between the Battery Maritime Building Slip 5 and the NYC Ferry St. George Terminal landing “approximately every 15 minutes” until 10 p.m. Wednesday before resuming again at 2 a.m. Thursday with hourly service. Ferries will then leave every half hour between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. and then "every 10-15 minutes during morning and evening rush hour," the city said. 

The MTA ramped up express and local bus service Wednesday night, the agency said. SIM1/SIM1C, SIM3/SIM3C, and SIM4/SIM4C buses will all be running more frequently, but the MTA did not specify exact timing. The S79 SBS, S53, and S93 buses will be running more frequently into Bay Ridge. 

“The recent disruptions in Staten Island Ferry service are no longer isolated cases. The disruptions have become systemic," Mallotakis and other Staten Island officials including Borough President Vito Fossella, said in a statement. "This leads us to believe that the matter needs to be resolved at the negotiating table. The Staten Island Ferry is a vital transportation service for tens of thousands of Staten Island residents. We do not want our ferry commuters to continue to be 'collateral damage' in this process. It’s the commuters who are suffering from a situation over which they neither have power nor responsibility.”