NYC Sanitation Union, Deliberately Held Up Plowing The Streets

[twyacht]

Good to know the Union folks can "take the high road" for their fellow citizens in times of a blizzard.

NOT.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sanit_filthy_snow_slow_mo_qH57MZwC53QKOJlekSSDJK

Sanitation Department's slow snow cleanup was a budget protest

By SALLY GOLDENBERG, LARRY CELONA and JOSH MARGOLIN

Last Updated: 12:37 PM, December 30, 2010

Posted: 2:34 AM, December 30, 2010

EXCLUSIVE


Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts -- a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.
A sleeping sanitation worker in Queens

"They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important," said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.

The snitches "didn't want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation," Halloran said. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."

New York's Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process -- and pad overtime checks -- which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.

****

OBTW, a newborn baby died, an elderly woman died, as ambulances could not get to them. 45,000, 911 calls took hours to get ambulances to, some EMT workers had to hike a couple blocks due to unplowed streets. Oh, but they got Times Square "all clean" for the New Years Celebration, and the tourists....

I wonder if the union negligence, will make them responsible for their actions.

[SwoopSJ]

I'm not an expert, by any means, when it comes to matters of law, but these miscreants need to be held responsible for their detestable actions.  They should be charged with wanton endangerment at the very least and then dragged into civil court by the families of those that died due to their behavior.

Swoop

[tombogan03884]

Michelle Malkin's column today carries a reminder of back in the 60's when union garbage collectors let trash build up till it was a genuine menace to public health and safety. Cholera warnings and rat infestations.
They simply don't give a damn and the mobbed up unions protect them from any mechanism designed to make them give a damn.

[Pecos Bill]

Question here: are the sanitation supervisors in NYC a part of the same union as the drivers? In my union the supervisors are not members of any union but do hold the power of discipline over their union drivers. If the NYC supervisors are not in the union why is the union being blamed for this action? Too many times the ultra liberals in this country blame all the ills of the work force on "unions". Let's occasionally remember who supervises all the work done in this country. When the head of a corporation makes more than 100 time the average pay of the people actually doing the work there is a problem. Before any of you take the time to flame me for what I just wrote try to understand I'm not a democrat or a communist or a socialist. I'm just a retired working stiff who's tired of the "powers that be" of blaming this country's ills on the working men and women, unionized or not. This country, and I include the government, rewards corporate leaders by investing more money in their corporations when they eliminate jobs here and send those jobs out of the country. If you ask why you get the same pat answer "the unions have priced themselves out of the market". You won't, however, get these same corporate big wigs to take a cut in their multi-million dollar salaries. We've all got to work together, unions, industry leaders, investors, and government, to put people back to work in THIS country not in Mexico, India and China.

Sorry about the rant but I'm tired of this anti-union crud I hear all the time from management types. I know there are some crappy unions and crappy union people but most union people, in my experience, gave an honest days work for an honest days pay and glad to do it.

Pecos

[tombogan03884]

The Union leadership is so tightly wound up with the Mafia and the Democratic party machine that they are nearly one organization, any one who rocks the boat will lose.

[Sponsor]

[Pecos Bill]

The Union leadership is so tightly wound up with the Mafia and the Democratic party machine that they are nearly one organization, any one who rocks the boat will lose.

To my knowledge my union was not that tight with organized crime (politicly correct?) but they had their noses so far up the Dems back sides it was and is pathetic that was why I stayed on their butts as best as I could. However, to blame the union in NYC for something the supervisors ordered is not fair either. My point was and still is most liberals blame the unions for all the problems in this country when the non-union leaders are shipping jobs off shore and breaking the country and their being rewarded. Let's all work together and get off this blame the working man kick and fix our problems. (We can start by firing the Federal Government and getting some people in there who want to do the job.) By the by, one of the biggest "corporations" in the country with a large number workers who don't want to work (I've seen this myself) is the NON-UNION federal government.

Pecos

[Ichiban]

Unions have been very beneficial in ensuring work place safety and decent pay for its members in many industries.  Those glory days are long gone and unions have become a self serving entity that is more interested in the power they wield than in actually doing the job they were designed to do.  They are very much like the two major political parties in that respect. 

Do they still have a place in the work force?  Probably in some more streamlined form.  Under the current manifestation they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg with their misplaced sense of entitlement and greed.

To wit:
The power of unions: Average stagehand at Lincoln Center in NYC makes $290K a year
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2010/12/power-unions-average-stagehand-lincoln-center-nyc-makes-290k-year

[Pecos Bill]

"misplaced sense of entitlement and greed"? The head of the corporation I worked for was paid 40 million in total compensation the year I retired (10 years ago) when I made 45k for the same year and that was with some required overtime.

What I'm trying to get at is not that the unions are the savior of the world these days, not at all, but they are not solely responsible for the economic ills in this country. While the national leaders of the unions may have lost complete touch with the rank and file so have the greedy management types who would love nothing better than to return to the "good old days" before the unions when your ability to work was dependent on some asshat who might not like the color of your shirt and would fire you from your .25 an hour job. At one time the company I worked for would suspend you for riding a motorcycle during your off time and fire you if you rode one to work. If that is the type of treatment the union bashers want then let's kill all unions and we can have those days back. Otherwise take a little time to read what's been written or spoken and think for a while about who is causing the problems in this country. By the way I know there are union worker who are making unbelievable salaries I'm not condoning that but can you really blame them for that when a baseball player makes 5 to 10 mil or more a year? I know, I know they're union but it still doesn't equate to the union people I worked with made 40 to 45k a year.

Pecos

[tombogan03884]

Bill, the relationship between Unions and "organized crime" goes back to the very earliest days of Union organizing in America. The Socialist's and Anarchists who led the fight for workers rights back then needed help to counter the Pinkerton  muscle employed as strike breakers by big business. So they turned to the criminal gangs that had demonstrated their abilities as hired muscle for the Democratic parties in NY and Chicago, and later LA.
This has nothing to do with our political sentiments, it is simply History and can be documented by any one who wishes to do a little research.
The fact that that relationship continued is illustrated by the fact that when the Navy wanted to secure NY's docks during WWII, they wound up dealing with Luciano, then of course you had Hoffa,in the Teamsters, and Tony Boyle at the UMWA (the guy who ordered the Jablonski family murdered.)
Up till a couple (?) years ago when it became a pay site I used to read Jerry Capesci's "Gangland" column from the New York Sun, This is a column that is used by NYPD as a source of info on who's who, his notes have been used in court cases, and even the "Five Families" refer to him and occasionally talk to him. He was frequently mentioning scandals involving every aspect of city services, Construction, garbage hauling,Storm windows in city housing the last one I was following was in School bus contracts .

[Ichiban]

It's the law of unintended consequences at work. 

Like cats on the Galapagos islands.  Cats (unions) were brought in to control the rats (bad management) that had inadvertently been introduced to the islands by visiting ships.  They made a small dent in the rat population but soon found that the local wildlife (the taxpayer), which had no natural fear of them, was easier prey.  So the local wildlife is being decimated by the cats as well as competing with the rats (who are still there but are sneakier now) for food.