Clean up this mess
Something stinks about a Bronx garbagetrucking company called Sanitation Salvage, exposed by the Daily News as a roving menace whose vehicles are tied to the brutal deaths of two men. Further digging by ProPublica reveals the Business Integrity Commission, the city’s anti-corruption overseer, let the firm roll right on through a permit renewal despite a history of phantom workers, a union organized in cahoots with company management (with the help of a man the feds call a Genovese mob family soldier and cash envelopes slipped to workers), a heap of unpaid workers’ compensation and more.
And this is hardly the only trash hauler to invite in its own pliant union to head off organizers from the Teamsters and Laborers, denying workers a chance to organize themselves to improve their working conditions: The News has also shown how a union called LIFE Local 890 exists to do just that.
The persistence of corruption in garbage hauling is a shame of our city, one that was supposed to be on its way to the landfill starting under Mayor Rudy Giuliani with the establishment of what was then called the Trade Waste Commission.
As they do, the bad guys found loopholes. They’re using sham unions knowing full well that the BIC won’t touch them there, despite its mission “to eliminate organized crime and other forms of corruption and criminality from the industries it regulates.”
Under Commissioner Daniel Brownell, a former rackets prosecutor, BIC closed one investigation, citing insufficient evidence connecting the company to bad actions, only to open another this spring, with the potential power to nix Salvage’s permit upon showing a lack of honesty, integrity or character.
It’s a crying shame that it took two deaths to get the anti-corruption agency doing its job. No question though, the laws also need strengthening. Brownell wants to expand his powers to oversee safety, in line with Mayor de Blasio’s Vision Zero.
First things first: Make sure sanitation companies submit their unions to outside scrutiny.