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More workers catch a 'cold'
By GINGER ADAMS OTIS
Last Updated: 4:28 AM, January 2, 2011
Posted: 2:09 AM, January 2, 2011

It was a real snow job.

Between 660 and 720 Sanitation workers called in sick for the cleanup of last week's blizzard -- more than double the usual rate, The Post has learned.

About 11 to 12 percent of the Sanitation Department's 6,000-strong force didn't show up for work on Monday or Tuesday, city officials confirmed, as 20 inches of snow brought the Apple to a near-standstill.

The spotty snow response sparked reports of a deliberate slowdown by some Sanitation supervisors angered by City Hall cost-cutting measures. The Department of Investigation is looking into the allegations.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/more_workers_catch_cold_v3XzpQhakSbrmY0LMcd6iJ

So their point was what? The city needs to cut spending and the workers decide to not show up in defiance? Fire all their a$$es and PRIVATIZE the service!!

Actually - part of the snow removal in NYC is done by private contractors .... and from folks that I know
in the city  .. the private contractors didn't do any better work.

NYT: City Delayed Call For Outside Help Until "Nearly 30 Hours After The Weather Service Had Raised Its Warning To a Winter Storm Watch." The Times article also stated that "[f]or years, an integral role in the city's best blizzard response plans" has included help from private contractors. From the article:

    For years, an integral role in the city's best blizzard response plans was filled not by municipal workers but by private contractors and construction crews, ready with front-end loaders, tow trucks, pickup trucks and Bobcat vehicles that can move snow from the tightest urban grids.

    Yet as the blizzard approached, the first calls from city officials for help went out around 9 a.m. on Sunday -- nearly 30 hours after the Weather Service had raised its warning to a winter storm watch, and more than 24 hours after Mr. Doherty, the veteran sanitation commissioner, sensed that a blizzard was well on its way, he said.

    [...]

    Help did not arrive in adequate enough numbers or in nearly enough time. And the resulting failure to clear the city's side streets, even 48 hours after the first significant accumulations, became the storm's signature outrage.

    "If we had the private industry and the front-end loaders early, come in, it would have been a big help, no question about it," Mr. Doherty said in an interview on Wednesday. "It is a problem."  [The New York Times, 12/29/10]

There are private contractors doing snow removal in NYC particularly in  Queens and Brooklyn.  I know
people who live in Queens and Brooklyn --- there streets are always plowed by private contractors hired
by the city  .... and those private contractors did NOT respond any faster than the city snow plows did in
those boroughs.

Privatization of municipal services is not always the best way to go.

What part of the city waiting 30 before they called in the private contractors didn't you understand. NYT: City Delayed Call For Outside Help Until "Nearly 30 Hours

Quoted from Shadow

What part of the city waiting 30 before they called in the private contractors didn't you understand. NYT: City Delayed Call For Outside Help Until "Nearly 30 Hours

what part of there are parts of the city that have always had the streets cleared by private contractors hired
by the city do YOU not understand ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I got my information from folks who actually live in Queens and Brooklyn ---  I don't trust everything that
is in the newspapers  )example -- read the Times-Union article about the January 1 town board meeting --
the T-U got a lot of things wrong in that article.)

Quoted from Shadow

    Yet as the blizzard approached, the first calls from city officials for help went out around 9 a.m. on Sunday -- nearly 30 hours after the Weather Service had raised its warning to a winter storm watch, and more than 24 hours after Mr. Doherty, the veteran sanitation commissioner, sensed that a blizzard was well on its way, he said.

    

Imagine if a Republican was mayor.  It would be all his fault for making this the issue.  In fact, I'm surprised they're not blaming this on Giuliani.

Don't believe me?  Then what was the fuss about when it took time to get people to go down into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?  Maybe President Obama should have sent in shoveling reinforcements. He's good at shoveling **it.

Yes don't believe anything written by the far right paper the New York Times. At least 8 news papers and news channels reported the same thing but you don't have to believe it as you live in your own little world and just make things up to fit the way you want them to be.

Quoted from Shadow

Yes don't believe anything written by the far right paper the New York Times. At least 8 news papers and news channels reported the same thing but you don't have to believe it as you live in your own little world and just make things up to fit the way you want them to be.

And some of the news channels and papers have been reporting conflicting stories ... the fact is that NYC has always had some private contractors under contract to help with snow removal ... and it is a fact that
folks in parts of Brooklyn and Queens are just as angry about the snow removal or lack of it ..
performed by these private contractors as others are about the city workers who remove snow.

and the New York Times is hardly a "far right newspaper".

The Mayor usually notifies the private contractors when he wants them to start clearing streets after he has declared a state of emergency and he must accept the blame for failure to do so in a timely manor.

Quoted from Shadow

The Mayor usually notifies the private contractors when he wants them to start clearing streets after he has declared a state of emergency and he must accept the blame for failure to do so in a timely manor.

The folks I spoke to have lived in NYC for years and were more certain that the private contractors came out
for every snowstorm ... not just as you say  "usually notifies" ...  so I will continue to believe what they have
told me based on first hand knowledge and not just what you assume based on your  150 mile away arm-chair
quarterbacking.

Sanitation workers spotted asleep on the job, apparently hanging out at a Coney Island Dunkin Donuts for 11 straight hours and some drinking beer for six or seven hours instead of working are all being probed.

“If they find people that did criminal acts they’re going to arrest them,” Department of Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said.

Quoted from Shadow

Sanitation workers spotted asleep on the job, apparently hanging out at a Coney Island Dunkin Donuts for 11 straight hours and some drinking beer for six or seven hours instead of working are all being probed.

“If they find people that did criminal acts they’re going to arrest them,” Department of Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said.

Ah -- so  now we get to the real story -- the workers sat on their butts -- you can't expect the mayor to be
chasing workers out of every Dunkin Donuts in NYC.  

NEW YORK (CBS 2/WCBS 880) — Call it the “blizzard backlash.”

Criminal investigations are under way to find out why it took so long to dig out from last week’s massive snow storm.

Videos released exclusively to CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer suggest that the clean-up job may have been dirtier than once thought.

PHOTO GALLERIES: Blizzard Slams East Coast | User-Submitted Pictures

One video is now in the hands of prosecutors. It shows two sanitation trucks driving down 155th Street in the Whitestone section of Queens after the blizzard without removing the snow.

Their plows were apparently raised and the snow was left untouched in their wake, apparent proof that some in the Sanitation Department engineered a work slowdown.