Waste removal is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. On the darkened streets of New York City, it’s a race for survival.
by Kiera Feldman, The Investigative Fund
Shortly before 5 a.m. on a recent November night, a garbage truck
with a New York Yankees decal on the side sped through a red light on an
empty street in the Bronx. The two workers aboard were running late.
Before long, they would start getting calls from their boss. “Where are
you on the route? Hurry up, it shouldn’t take this long.” Theirs was one
of 133 garbage trucks owned by Action Carting, the largest waste
company in New York City, which picks up the garbage and recycling from
16,700 businesses.
Going 20 miles per hour above the city’s 25 mph limit, the Action
truck ran another red light with a worker, called a “helper,” hanging
off the back. Just a few miles away the week before, another man had
died in the middle of the night beneath the wheels of another company’s
garbage truck. The Action truck began driving on the wrong side of the
road in preparation for the next stop. The workers were racing to pick
up as much garbage as possible before dawn arrived and the streets
filled with slow traffic. “This route should take you twelve hours,” the
boss often told them. “It shouldn’t take you fourteen hours.”
Working 10- to 14-hour days, six days per week, means that no one is
ever anything close to rested. The company holds monthly safety meetings
and plays videos, taken by cameras installed inside the trucks, of
Action drivers falling asleep at the wheel. “You’re showing us videos of
guys being fatigued, guys falling asleep,” a driver told me. (All
Action employees asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation.) “But you
aren’t doing anything about it.”
“In the history of the company I am sure there have been times where
supervisors have inappropriately rushed people,” said Action Carting CEO
Ron Bergamini. “They shouldn’t be, and they’d be fired if they ever
told people to run red lights or speed. But you have to find the balance
between efficiency and safety, and that’s a struggle we work on every
day. But you cannot turn around and say, ‘Hey just take your time, go as
long as you want.’” He pointed out that workers can anonymously report
concerns to a safety hotline. As to the questions of overwork and driver
fatigue, Bergamini responded, “That’s a struggle that the whole
industry has — of getting people to work less.”
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Source: ProPublica
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