Copyright 2004 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC
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The New York Sun
January 28, 2004 Wednesday
SECTION: NEW YORK; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 716 words

HEADLINE: GROUND ZERO CLEANUP WORKERS TO BE SWEPT AWAY

BYLINE: By DANIELA GERSON Staff Reporter of the Sun

BODY:
One thousand asbestos and environmental workers, many of whom were exposed to hazardous conditions during the ground zero cleanup, will lose their jobs due to a recent increase in identification requirements, labor leaders have told The New York Sun.

The state began issuing asbestos abatement licenses through the Department of Motor Vehicles last July, disqualifying roughly 1,000 workers, many of whom are illegal immigrants, from renewing their licenses because they lack sufficient documentation.

"These workers are the forgotten heroes of 9/11," a work-force organizer, Edison Severino, said. "No one asked them for a drivers' license then. But today, when they are starting to get sick from the toxic chemicals in the air after 9/11, they are being shut out by a regulation that denies them their medical coverage and livelihood."

The business manger of Asbestos, Lead, and Hazardous Waste Laborers' Local 78, Sal Speziale, said that during the ground zero cleanup the union, which represents about 90% of asbestos workers, swelled to 3,300 members from the current 2,500. As union members, they were guaranteed a $25.50 an hour salary and benefits including health insurance.

"At the time, I don't believe it [immigration status] was even a concern. There wasn't enough workers to do this work," Mr. Speziale said. "After September 11, we got sucked up in this red tape - I don't think any of my members are going to throw asbestos out of a window."

As a security precaution, the State Department of Labor has required workers with cranes, lasers, explosives, and hazardous materials to have a DMV number since July.

"It took place to streamline the system to make it more efficient and quicker," a spokesman for the New York State Department of Labor, Robert Lillpopp, said. "It's part of our effort to cut red tape in government."

The administrator of the New York State Laborers' Political Action Committee, James Melius, a physician who has been negotiating with the governor's office on behalf of the asbestos workers, said he felt the state's adoption of a DMV-granted license was an extension of the desire to better regulate the industry, not weed out illegal immigrants.

Dr. Melius, who previously oversaw the training of asbestos workers for almost a decade, said "a relatively high incidence of fraud and forged licenses" created the concern.

"The Department of Labor at the state level always had an attitude where this was not their issue so they would not be put in the position of enforcing immigration laws," he said. "This is one of the first times that the [DOL] have put in place an action which discriminates in this way."

Mauricio, a 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Ecuador, spent four months cleaning up the ground zero site. Today, he has a nasty cough, shortness of breath, and has lost his asbestos abatement license.

When he arrived in America four years ago, his uncle suggested he join him as an asbestos worker. Mauricio bought a fake Social Security card in Queens and paid $500 to take a three-day course.

"It's unjust," he said in Spanish. "We have to do the work Americans don't want to do and then they take away the license."

While asbestos-related diseases, such as scarring of the lungs and various cancers, take at least 15 years to appear, the co-director of the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Screening Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Robin Herbert, said the workers have various health problems.

Dr. Herbert said the program had seen hundreds of immigrant workers, "who were involved in the World Trade Center recovery efforts, who've now become sick because of exposures and are finding themselves in just the most miserable circumstances."

City Council Member Hiram Monserrate, who traveled to Albany to present the concerns of his heavily immigrant Queens' district to the state labor commissioner last month, said he was hopeful a solution would be resolved in favor of the workers.

"These are experienced workers who do a hazardous job, and they have been doing this for many years," Mr. Monserrate said. "It just seems to me to be very unfair to, under the guise of more security, to make it more difficult for individuals who are gainfully employed to remain gainfully employed."