9/11 OUTRAGE
NO SICK LEAVE FOR CITY WORKER
NYPD civilian traffic agent Linda Mercer is among the hundreds of city workers who labored at Ground Zero in the bleak days after 9/11 — and years later, was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
But unlike the many civil servants who share her fate, Mercer — who has inoperable cancer — won’t spend her final days with family at home. Instead, the 59-yearold Queens resident will be at work, wondering why civilian employees like her can’t get the same unlimited sick leave as cops, firefighters and sanitation workers.
Unlike them, Mercer gets 12 sick days a year — one for each month — and 2½ weeks of vacation days.
“We’re under the same umbrella (as the NYPD), so we should have the same benefits,” Mercer told the Daily News last week as she prepared for another day in the department’s Traffic Enforcement Division. “I know some people might abuse sick time, but in my situation (unlimited sick leave) would have benefited me.”
City Hall could authorize unlimited sick time to all civilian employees diagnosed with a 9/11-related illness — there are about 4,000 suffering the same fate as Mercer — but Mayor de Blasio would rather hash out the particulars in arbitration with union heads, advocates said.
“(With unlimited sick time) I could have stayed out longer and not worry about being off payroll, but I don’t have that benefit,” Mercer said. “I would love to hear the mayor say that Traffic will get some unlimited sick time.”
Last year, Gov. Cuomo signed off on a bill granting unlimited paid sick leave to state employees with a 9/11related illness outside of New York City — but de Blasio hasn’t followed suit, said Mercer’s attorney Matthew McCauley, a former NYPD cop.
“The spirit of the bill signed by Gov. Cuomo was to provide sick time to 9/11 responders that suffer from 9/ 11-related illnesses,” McCauley said. “They derive no other benefit from it, no cash payments or pension benefits, just time off to deal with illnesses like cancer. Linda Mercer is the poster child for this benefit. In the spirit of the bill, she should be covered and be given the same 9/11 sick time benefits others have.”
The married mother of three — and grandmother of three — became a traffic enforcement agent in 1982, about 14 years before her agency merged with the NYPD.
Since 1999, she’s been assigned to truck enforcement, where she weighs and checks all the big rigs rumbling through the city for violations.
When the twin towers were destroyed, she and her team were asked to weigh and secure the dust-covered trucks carrying debris out of Ground Zero to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, where it would be searched for human remains.
The North Carolina native’s post was just a few feet from the toxic hole — and she couldn’t help but breathe in the poisonous smoke.
“They didn’t give us any masks,” she remembered. “They said we didn’t qualify, so we were down there with no masks.”
She was moved from Ground Zero in February 2002. Last year, as she celebrated her 35th year in traffic enforcement, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
It was a shock for a woman with no history of the disease in her family and who enjoyed keeping active, both on the job and off.
Mercer was immediately put on a chemotherapy regimen, but the treatment didn’t work. In September, doctors told her that the cancer had spread to both sides of her liver and was now inoperable.
“They opened her up, looked inside and said there was nothing they could do,” McCauley said.
At the end of this month, she’s going for another round of chemotherapy, just so the cancer doesn’t spread.
Right now, Mercer has exhausted all of her paid time off with the exception of 30 hours of comp time, which she plans to use when she begins her next round of chemotherapy treatments.
Despite feeling nauseous and getting pains in her fingers and feet from her first round of chemo, Mercer always went back to work the next day. If not, she would have been taken off the books — and that would mean no paycheck.
“That’s a roof over my head and groceries in my house,” she said about her $46,000 annual salary. “I can’t afford no pay.”
Neither she nor her husband, who also worked in Traffic and is now retired, could survive if she decided to retire and get half her salary, she said.
A spokesman said City Hall is reaching out to Mercer to figure out how best to help her.
“Everyone who responded to 9/11 and its aftermath is a hero, which is why we’re working with unions to come up with a solution that will provide these heroes with the paid sick leave they deserve,” spokesman Raul Contreras said. “We expect to have a solution soon.”