By JANE LaTOUR

On the afternoon of June 23, City Council member James E. Davis was the first speaker to testify about workplace violence before the State Hazard Abatement Board. As a former Police and Correction Officer, Mr. Davis was familiar with the dangers that confront public workers on the job. As the chair of the City Council’s Juvenile Justice Committee, he held hearings on violence against DC 37 members in the Juvenile Centers.

The board held hearings to consider the need for the State Dept. of Labor to adopt a Public Employee Workplace Violence Standard — a set of regulations to protect workers from violence at their jobs.

“We need a single standard,” said Mr. Davis. “A reasonable remedy is within reach. It should not just be a symbolic gesture. Injuries can be avoided.”

Exactly one month later, James Davis was gunned down in his own workplace — in the balcony of the City Council chambers. His death dramatically underscored the problem. In New York State, homicide is the No. 2 cause of workplace fatalities. Mr. Davis was killed on the very day that he was to introduce a City Council resolution urging the State Labor Dept. to adopt the standard.

On Aug. 19, the City Council met for the first time since his murder and passed the resolution unanimously. Now it is up to the state to take action.

Coalition effort
DC 37’s Safety and Health Dept. has been in the forefront of the campaign for a standard, leading a coalition of unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, the Professional Staff Congress, the Public Employees Federation and the Transport Workers Union. Joining with these unions on June 23, members and officers of DC 37 presented chilling testimony on the problem.

Municipal Hospital Employees Union Local 420 President Carmen Charles spoke about the experiences of her members, including Maurice Jacobs, who was assaulted and injured in a psychiatric unit at Kings County Hospital. Kenny Mulligan, Clerical-Administrative Local 1549’s workplace violence coordinator, told of the assaults on members in city welfare centers. Local 1549 member Claudia Barrow became overwrought as she told about the brutal assault she sustained Feb. 12, 2002, at an HRA center.

DC 37 Safety and Health Director Lee Clarke took over to tell Ms. Barrow’s story: “She was hit with a chair and a metal trash can by a client’s 6-foot boyfriend, handcuffed and strip-searched. She suffered a concussion among other injuries. Her employer still has not paid any of her medical costs.”

Members at risk
Health Service Employees Union Local 768 President Darryl Ramsey recounted the recent experience of a Pest Control Aide in Harlem. He was accosted, robbed, and beaten while traveling on the job. “His eyes were swollen from the blows he endured and he passed out from the beating. He woke up in a hospital bed,” said Mr. Ramsey.

Social Service Employees Union Local 371 President Charles Ensley noted that the members are extremely vulnerable in the workplace. “The client populations take their frustrations out on the workers who are trying to help them,” he said. As a former state commissioner of labor, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts told the board, “Violence in the workplace is so predictable. The employer denies it and is too willing to accept inaction or to accuse the employees of mishandling it.”

Ms. Roberts urged the board to review the horrific litany of assaults outlined in the testimony and the statistics provided by the union’s Safety and Health Dept. She urged them to adopt an adequate standard with enforcement mechanisms — one that would serve to protect public workers from violence while they are working. “It is time that the state and the city send the same message of zero tolerance for violence at the workplace,” she said.