Public Employee Press

CONTRACT NOW!
Sewage Treatment Workers tell the city:
“We keep your water clean, but we need a raise”

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Each day, the city’s 8 million residents and workers discharge 1.4 billion gallons of wastewater.

The wastewater goes down the toilets, sinks and pipes of homes, businesses and schools into the city’s vast sewer system. Along with rainwater and melting snow, it travels through a giant network of 6,000 miles of sewer pipes, 135,000 catch basins, and 93 pumping stations before winding up in one of the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s 14 wastewater treatment plants.

At the plants, the wastewater is cleaned and the processed effluent is dumped into the city’s waterways. The plants also use the sewerage to produce sludge, which is converted to biosolids used as fertilizer or soil conditioners for lawns, golf courses, cemeteries and parklands.

Outside of the public eye, a workforce of more than 800 Sewage Treatment Workers and Sr. STWs ensure that wastewater treatment plants operate efficiently 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The workers take tremendous pride that their job is so important to the health and safety of the people who live and work in the city.

“Can you imagine what would happen if the 1.4 billion gallons of wastewater produced every day wasn’t treated?” asked James Tucciarelli, president of Sewage Treatment Workers and Sr. STWs Local 1320. “It would have an unbelievable impact on the city. The beaches would be closed. There would be a health crisis. And the region’s economy would be crippled.”

Tucciarelli likes to describe his members as the “unsung heroes of the ‘city that never sleeps.’ ”

“Everyone knows what Firefighters and PoliceOfficers do because they are very visible,” Tucciarelli said.

“But when people flush their toilet and the water disappears, people really don’t know what happens after that. They don’t realize that the waste winds up in the city’s sewage treatment plants, where you have 800 workers who are exposed to hazards on a daily basis to make sure that the environment is clean and safe.”

The Sewage Treatment Workers have long maintained an esprit de corps as an invisible workforce of environmental warriors. But these days, their pride and morale are being shattered as they are caught up in a bitter six-year battle to win a new contract for a fair wage.

Local 1320 members are seeking pay increases through a complicated process in which the Comptroller establishes a new pay rate by conducting a survey that compares the workers’ pay with that of other prevailing rate employees with similar duties. That rate is then supposed to set the parameters of contract talks with the city.

The Comptroller found, in a preliminary finding, that members pay is significantlly less than that of Mechanics in the private sector. Frustrated that the survey process is dragging on, the local is taking the matter to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings to try to force the Comptroller to issue a formal finding.

"They are trying to starve us out"
Meanwhile, the city has refused to use the preliminary findings as a framework for contract discussions, insisting that the local agree to the terms of the two economic agreements rejected by members. Today, DC 37 is in the midst of tense negotiations with the city for a new economic agreement covering nearly 100,000 other members, and nearly a year into the talks, the union is growing increasingly angry about the pace of negotiations with the Office of Labor Relations.

“They are attempting to starve us out,” said Sewage Treatment Worker Joe Costantino, a shop steward who works at the Bowery Bay wastewater treatment plant in Astoria, Queens.

Nearly 20 years ago, Costantino was a Plumber. He took a pay cut to become a Sewage Treatment Worker because he wanted the job stability and benefits of the public sector. He’d grown tired of the periodic layoffs in the private sector, he said.

But while Costantino accepted a pay rate a few dollars below what he received in the private sector, since he got his job at the Dept. of Environmental Protection, the gap has now skyrocketed.

“I am making about $23 an hour and some guys on the outside are now making in the upper 40s,” he said.

The pay gap with blue-collar workers in the private sector is particularly frustrating for the Sewage Treatment Workers because they are required to have three years of experience and training as a trades worker in order to get hired at the Dept. of Environmental Protection. Local 1320 members come to the job with three years experience and training as Plumbers, Electricians, Masons, HVAC workers and Millwrights. Once on the job, they also must be certified as Wastewater Plant Operators by the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation.

The lion’s share of the workers’ job involves basic operations — maintaining and monitoring the giant tanks in the sewage treatment plants in which the wastewater is processed into effluent and sludge. But they are also responsible for general plant maintenance and a myriad of other tasks, including welding, painting, using forklifts and even mowing lawns. They also maintain the sewage pumping stations throughout the city’s five boroughs.

The uniqueness of the sewage treatment workers’ job and their multiple responsibilities and diversity of skills make it difficult for the Comptroller to compare their work with that of other blue-collar workers in the private and public sectors. Local 1320 isn’t pleased with the title — Mechanic — that the Comptroller ultimately chose for comparison because of its relatively low pay scale and differing skills.

“We have cleaned up the environment over the years and just feel like we are a forgotten group,” said Tucciarelli, describing the anger — and hurt — of his membership over the stalled contract talks.

“A generation ago you had medical waste washing up on our beaches and nowadays beach closings are uncommon. Along with tougher regulations and major investments in the upgrading of the city’s wastewater treatment plants, it is the hard work and dedication of the DEP workforce that has dramatically improved the environment of the city.”

For workers, as Tucciarelli and Costantino point out, the city’s stubbornness and the Comptroller’s lack of movement seems especially disrespectful since they are employed in a job in which they put their health and safety — and even their lives — on the line. Years ago, one member died when he fell into a tank. Another died because of exposure to parasites.

“On a daily basis, we deal with working conditions where we must be very careful about avoiding slips and falls, and we regularly face the possibility of being injured while using heavy machinery,” Tucciarelli said.

“We’re exposed to hazardous materials ranging from the explosive methane gas produced in the plants to nasty hazards in the waste. All we are asking for is a fair cost-of-living increase like everyone else,” Tucciarelli said. “We have been pushed to the limit.”