The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.65/No.43            November 12, 2001 
 
 
At New York cleanup site workers fight for pay, union rights
(feature article)
 
BY RÓGER CALERO  
"We all need jobs, but we need protection," said Javier Torres as he waited with other workers in a morning shape-up area to be hired for work in the cleaning and removal of debris from buildings around the World Trade Center site. Looking across to the fence and police cordon around the work site, Torres said, "This is another way of exploiting workers."

Torres is a member of Asbestos/Lead Abatement Laborers Local 12A and an experienced asbestos worker. He was speaking about the fact that the companies contracted to clean up the area are refusing to hire many union members, and instead employ on a day-labor basis hundreds of workers who are not given even basic safety protection to wear.

From descriptions of Torres and other workers over several mornings here, the way at least this aspect of the cleanup work is being organized constitutes a further assault on the construction unions in the city.

The day laborers, in their majority undocumented immigrants, are told they will be paid $7.50 an hour by subcontractors to work them in 8- to 12-hour shifts without a contract or overtime pay. Once the work crews are put together, they join a line of workers outside the heavily guarded gate. They must show identification to police and submit to searches before being escorted by the cops to the work site. Dozens of others are hired each day to clean offices and businesses in the areas that were shut down after the attack.

"The contractors say the workers are 'only' cleaning," said Torres, who pointed to the companies' disregard for safety when they send in workers without the necessary protection. "There is asbestos in the dust here that people cleaning up are breathing," he added. A cleaning worker added that many times the work crews had to ask the Red Cross staff for dust masks, since they were not provided with one by the recruiters. "If they are lucky, all they get is one of those 99-cents-a-box dust masks, that don't protect you from anything," said another experienced asbestos worker.

Torres said that many of the union members have not worked for several weeks, since the bosses prefer not to pay the $18 to $22 an hour asbestos workers make. "And if you go with them," he said of the recruiters, "there is no guarantee that you will get paid."

Another description of the conditions that exist at the World Trade Center site was provided by the New York Daily News in a report on documents obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA report says that the amount of toxic chemicals and metals in the air and soil around the World Trade Center have reached levels considerably over federal standards, posing long-term risks for hundreds of workers at the site.

Among the chemicals listed that exceed these exposure limits is benzene, a colorless liquid that evaporates and can cause leukemia, bone marrow damage, and other diseases in long-term exposure. According to the Daily News, benzene level readings on October 2 from three spots around the World Trade Center were at 42, 31, and 16 times higher than the permissible exposure limits. Other readings have found the level of lead in the air at nearly three times the EPA standard.

"There is no excuse for what I saw," read a consultant's report for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences issued October 25 after a visit to the area. "It's the worst site I've ever seen, extremely hazardous. Very few of the workers were wearing even the most basic protective equipment," said the consultants.  
 
Unpaid wages
Employees of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety visited the work site in mid-October to talk with workers about safety procedures. Instead, they reported they got an "earful" from the cleaning crews, some of whom had not been paid for up to two weeks. They said workers had kept detailed notes about who hired them, when they worked, and what pay levels were promised. When they asked the contractor when they would be paid they were told repeatedly, "Tomorrow, tomorrow."

As these facts began to be revealed in the media, the state attorney felt pressured to open an investigation. The federal and state agencies, however, claim that they are not responsible for the subcontractors hiring the crews at the site, many of whom are nowhere to be found according to the workers.

Gloria Pérez, who is laid off from her job with a cleaning company, and who comes here every day looking for a job, described how a whole crew was fired when one of the workers demanded payment of their wages and threatened to file a complaint.

"Things are bad," she said referring to how sometimes they can go without work for days. "But if it wasn't for this tragedy there would be more unemployment, and we would be at home with nothing to do," she said.

The dangers faced by construction workers in New York City are not limited to those at the World Trade Center. On October 24 a 14-story-high scaffolding collapsed, resulting in the death of five workers and injuring 14 others. One of the injured workers said that he believed the scaffolding fell because of excess load. According to press reports several of the victims of the disaster were buried in a three-story pile of twisted metal and splintered wooden planks. City authorities said that the scaffold had been erected without a permit and that the district attorney has opened a criminal investigation.
 
 
Related article:
Bosses use attack on World Trade Center to justify layoffs  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home