TBTA Manager Cited In $735G Harass Case Is a Repeat Offender

A manager at the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority with a record of sexual and racial harassment just got another entry on his resume.

A Federal jury July 30 awarded $735,000 in damages to a former Queens-Midtown Tunnel worker who claimed that he was denied promotions because he was Jewish. The lawsuit named both the authority and Peter Senesi, the General Manager of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel who was once known by his colleagues at another TBTA crossing as the "Porno King of Whitestone."

Berated Blacks, Women

Mr., Senesi's trouble started in November 1990, when he was sent to sensitivity training after referring to temporary black Bridge and Tunnel Officers as "cockroaches." In 1999, when he was the General Manager of the Triborough Bridge, he found himself the target along with the authority in a Federal lawsuit resulting in a jury awarding $250,000 to two female BTOs who claimed they faced sexual harassment on the job from a contractor.

Ignored Complaints

The jury found that Mr. Senesi had ignored complaints from the BTOs that they were facing sexual harassment and that he took no action on them when they reported harassment by workers of the Allside Service Corporation, a private cleaning company that the authority used in the mid-1990s.

In 1995, one of the female BTOs claimed, after she mentioned the problems to the then-chief of the authority's Equal Employment Opportunity office, Mr. Senesi called her at home and accused her of going above his head.

It was during this investigation that Mr. Senesi admitted that he watched pornographic videos while he worked at the Whitestone Bridge. A union official testified that he was the go-to dealer on any given day for videos, earning him the nickname the "Porno King of Whitestone."

The recent jury award was based on claims by the ex-worker, Gregory Fishman, that he was improperly passed over for promotion by Mr. Senesi and retaliated against when he complained, and that in an earlier meeting about his sick days, the supervisor used an expletive in referring to his ethnicity.

Such allegations harkened back to the case in 1999 involving the two female BTOs, who claimed that Mr. Senesi told them that they were being "f------ crybabies" when they complained about sexual harassment on the job.