At an optical business in New York City, it took months of coaxing, a cash bonus and a weekly testing mandate to persuade 90 percent of the staff to get a coronavirus vaccine.

By Nicole Hong

Tiara Felix loves her job at an eyewear store in the Bronx, where she spends five days a week managing customer orders in a back-room lab, surrounded by colleagues fitting and cutting lenses for glasses.

But there is one thing that could prompt Ms. Felix, 31, to leave: a vaccine mandate.

“There’s no choice,” she said. “I’ll have to quit.”

Ms. Felix is among the six remaining unvaccinated employees at her company, Metro Optics Eyewear, who have been unmoved by a monthslong campaign by their bosses to persuade every employee to voluntarily get a coronavirus vaccine.

Time is running out. Employers across the United States are now confronted with the same question of whether to fire workers who refuse to get vaccinated, a dilemma that carries new urgency as the rapidly spreading Delta variant leads to a surge in hospitalizations among the unvaccinated and threatens to stall the economic recovery.

This week, New York City became the first American city to announce a vaccination requirement for workers and customers at a variety of indoor venues, including restaurants, gyms and theaters. Across New York City, 66 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated.

The new rules followed weeks of pressure by city leaders on private businesses to mandate vaccines or frequent testing as a condition of employment. A growing number of companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and the fitness chain Equinox, have announced that employees must be vaccinated to return to the office.

But the issue can be particularly complicated for the many small businesses that provide jobs to more than three million people in New York City, about half of the city’s work force.

They often employ lower-income workers, who polling has shown are less likely to get vaccinated because of a mix of factors, including distrust of public health officials, limited access to vaccine sites and less of an ability to take time off work. Losing even one employee by requiring vaccinations can have an outsized impact, especially in a summer where help-wanted signs have dotted restaurants, corner stores and salons across the city.

At Metro Optics Eyewear, which has four stores in the Bronx, home to the lowest vaccination rate in New York City, it has been a painstaking journey to persuade 90 percent of employees to get vaccinated.

Most of the company’s 58 employees live in the Bronx, where the business has been offering eye exams and selling glasses for four decades. Fifty-eight percent of adults in the borough are fully vaccinated, compared with 75 percent of adults in Manhattan.

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