NYC schools falling apart
Union blames privatization
By Lyn Neeley
New York
A union representing engineers and architects
employed by the city has charged that the privatization of
repair work on city schools contributed to the death of a high
school student last year.
Yan Zhen Zhao, 16, was killed in January 1998
when a brick fell off the roof of P.S. 131 in Brooklyn,
striking her on the head. After an 11-month investigation, the
city released a report saying a construction project at the
school had been a "blueprint for disaster" and that the
contractor had virtually no experience in overhead brick
work.
Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 of
AFSCME represents workers at the School Construction Authority,
which is responsible for building and repairing New York City
schools. A statement from the union called "What are they
trying to hide?" blames private construction companies, the
banks, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki for the
death of Zhao and the physical deterioration of city
schools.
"The incident at P.S. 131 is a real indictment
of privatization as well as an indictment of the use of
political influence over the needs of our community and the
safety of the public," said the statement.
The union explains that SCA in-house engineers
and architects are being sidestepped in favor of private
construction and consulting companies, even though the city's
own employees are required to have more education, licensing
and experience. The private companies charge more, pay their
workers less and cut corners on safety regulations.
So why is the SCA giving more jobs to these
companies than to in-house union workers?
In 1995 Governor Pataki created the New York
State Council on Privatization and appointed Paul Atanasio
trustee of the SCA. Atanasio, a managing director in public
finance of Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street's largest brokerage
houses, had lined up Conservative Party support for Pataki, who
is a Republican. Atanasio hired his secretary's husband, Gary
Marrone, another Conservative Party activist, to oversee the
work at the P.S. 131 site. Marrone, who had already been fired
from other construction projects, "enraged officials at P.S.
131 by his frequent absence from the site," said an article in
the Dec. 17, 1998, New York Times.
"Atanasio has no expertise in school
construction," says Local 375. "His real expertise is in
protecting the interests of the bondholders and in making
public funds available to private investors either through
these bond issues or by contracting-out."
One of the consultants on the site where Zhao
was killed, Lehrer McGovern Bovis, "has received tens of
millions of dollars in contracts from the city over the past
decade," says the union. "LMB was listed as one of the
contractors who exceeded the legal campaign contribution limit
[to Mayor Giuliani]. LMB was pulled off the job on the day of
the accident." Union attempts to get a copy of the SCA contract
with LMB have been "stonewalled."
Local 375 is demanding that the city raise, not
lower, the percentage of unionized city employees required to
work on school and other city construction projects.
This article is copyright under a Creative
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