By: Nick Buglione
More than 100 members of Civil Service Employees Association Local 880, the union that represents Hempstead town sanitation workers, gathered in front of its headquarters at 1580 Merrick Road in Merrick April 10. The union office is adjacent to the sanitation department's headquarters at 1600 Merrick Road.
"We're not radicals -- we understand that they have to cut back overtime, but don't eliminate it," said Santo Saia, executive vice president of CSEA Local 880. "They could have worked it out, cut us back."
Many Long Island sanitation workers depend on overtime pay to help make ends meet, because the cost of living is extremely high, Saia said.
Dick Ronan, sanitation department commissioner, said he sympathized with the workers, but he defended the move in the face of tough financial times. "I have to provide the best services at the lowest cost to the taxpayers," he said.
Sanitation employees typically work five days a week, and used to get paid overtime if they clocked in on the weekend, Ronan said, which is common, since the department "runs a six- to seven-days-a-week operation." Now, however, workers might still have to work over the weekend but are being asked to take a day off during the week, so they can be paid straight time, he said.
The department announced the elimination of overtime officially on April 1, but had given workers a week's notice beforehand, Ronan said. He expects certain circumstances will arise in the future in which overtime will still have to be paid.
The union is also angry that the department is outsourcing work on its trucks and vehicles to Syosset Trucks, a private, non-union shop in the Town of Hempstead. The sanitation department has its own staff of union mechanics who normally do the work. "I told the commissioner we can't allow that," Saia said. "We can't tolerate that."
For years, though, the department has sought the help of outside mechanics, Ronan said. "We've always had situations that if they started to fall behind in the shop, we outsourced the work." The department's shop consists of about 30 workers, half of whom are mechanics and half of whom are support staff, the commissioner said.
In the past it has also been commonplace for the department to give the more complicated jobs, such as transmission repairs, to outside shops, Ronan said.
While the union doesn't dispute that, the department has never brought in outside staff to work alongside the union employees in the shops, Saia said. "When they bring people in to work in our shop and they want our guys to work with them, that's not right," he said. "It's a slap in the face to the men here."
The Hempstead sanitation department comprises over 400 workers and some 200 vehicles, which collect about 492,000 tons of garbage each year.
