Public Employee Press

Solidarity wins
for Sewage Treatment Workers

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Strained and broken marriages. Threats of foreclosure. Huge credit card debts. Sewage Treatment Workers and Sr. Sewage Treatment Workers went through hell as they endured eight years without a raise in their all-out fight for just wages.

But in the end, the 800 members of Local 1320 prevailed. They stuck together — and now they are getting hefty salary increases and substantial back pay.

“Management was looking to beat us down so that we would get disgusted with the process and cave,” said Local 1320 President James Tucciarelli. “But our sense of trade unionism won out.”

In 2002, Local 1320 members voted to have their wages set through a complicated process in which the Comptroller recommends their pay based on the prevailing wages in similar private sector jobs. The problem was that the city put up roadblock after roadblock before finally agreeing to settle earlier this year.

Hardships

The agreement raises the workers’ pay to $73,000 a year from the previous range of $31,000 to $48,000. It scraps a poorly structured step-pay plan, which Tucciarelli said often kept workers at a lower rate by imposing troublesome training and certification requirements for advancement.

Members told PEP of the hardships they and their families endured during the grueling pay dispute.

Local 1320 Vice President Tom Custance, who works at the Hunt’s Point Water Pollution Control Plant, said the economic strain caused members to postpone their decisions to get married and have children. Desperate for extra funds, a couple of workers put their pride on hold and applied for Food Stamps, only to be denied. One worker is stuck with a higher mortgage because he had to scramble to refinance his mortgage under the gun of a 30-day foreclosure notice.

“We decided to wait a little bit,” Sr. STW Mike Fitzgibbon said, recalling how he and his wife put off having their three children. To support his family better, Fitzgibbon found a second job as a handyman at a public school.

José Lebron, an STW at the Red Hook plant in Brooklyn, was happy to resign from his second job at Home Depot, which he no longer needs thanks to his big pay raise. Lebron estimated that the financial pressure drove as many as 70 percent of his co-workers to take on second jobs.

Lebron said he looks forward to using his back pay to wipe out his credit card debt and pay off the $74,000 that he has run up on his home equity line of credit. STW Sean Connolly attributed his divorce partly to the tension resulting from his family’s tight budget. After his divorce, he was forced to move back in with his parents. Connolly and his 5-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, use the living room, where he sleeps on a sofa.

Connolly and other members expressed their anger toward the city for disrupting their lives by prolonging the wage battle.

Ironically, much of the workers’ anger toward the city stems from the tremendous pride they take in their jobs. Because of their professionalism and dedication to protecting the environment, the local never seriously considered major disruptive work actions, Custance said.

Soaring debt

Jim Johnson, a Sr. STW at the Port Richmond Plant on Staten Island, expressed his frustration that he was unable to support his children with their college education as much as he would have liked. His frozen pay forced him to max out a pension loan and take out about $20,000 on his credit card.

As local president, Tucciarelli often found himself the sounding board for members’ frustrations.

“I am the guy who is supposed to bring home the bacon, not only for the guys but their wives and children,” Tucciarelli said. “To tell the truth, I started doubting myself at times. I would sometimes lie awake in bed at 4 in the morning thinking about how we could get through this. But thanks to the members’ persistence and a new commissioner who was willing to listen, we finally resolved this fight.”