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No Respect for STWs

No Respect for Sewage Treatment Workers 

To the Editor:

All the talk of pay raises going through and successful negotiations between the city and unions got me to thinking. The Department of Environmental Protection Sewage Treatment Workers have been working without a contract for more than six years now.

I understand that strong unions get the grease and weak ones get the shaft, but explain to me the discrepancy between the Department of Sanitation refusing to pick up waste that my husband works with all day for just over 21 bucks an hour, with top pay there being 23 and change. Explain to me how the Laborers get a raise to 34 bucks an hour and they don't even have to be high school graduates.

And then explain to me how the city negotiators at the last bargaining session for Local 1320 can say they are going into another room to think about the counter-offer and then leave the building (after arriving two hours late to a meeting that lasted a half-hour and was supposed to be an all-nighter that would finally hammer out a fair and decent living wage). It would almost be funny if it weren't so damn important to more than 1,700 families that are living pay check to paycheck.

Being a Sewage Treatment Worker is certainly not a sexy job, but trust me, it's important. The fact that you don't have to contemplate what the job means just goes to show that they do it well. So I ask the Mayor and the Comptroller to tell me how it's right to be this disrespectful to city workers who, literally, get dumped on enough.

And please, choose your words clearly, because I am very, very interested in your answer.

JENNIFER BURKE