9/11 ... Plus One
Defending unions and civil rights is part of the fallout
New York City — Conventional wisdom says the world changed on Sept. 11. But how did it really change? Some new phrases have entered our everyday vocabulary – the war on terrorism, homeland security, and that numeric shorthand, 9/11. Lives and attitudes were changed, too. And while things will never be the same again, a sense of normalcy has set in for some.
UAW member Bob Cino was at ground zero a year ago. A 32-year-old licensed welder working in the service department of a Manhattan General Motors dealership and member of Local 259 living on Staten Island, he answered the call for volunteers to cut steel beams in the wreckage of the Twin Towers.
“I heard on the radio they needed people to relieve the ironworkers who’d been there round the clock,” he recalls. “I had to do something.”
On the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack, the atmosphere in his shop was very tense. “We had one ear on the radio while we were doing our job,” Cino says. “Face it, we’re here in New York — we feel like we’re a target.” Most days, though, things are pretty much back to normal. “I see the cops at the bridges and tunnels on my way to work, but they’re not checking any trucks or vans. They’re drinking coffee,” he says.
Cino feels the government isn’t doing enough to prevent future attacks.
As for President Bush, “He dropped the ball. He hasn’t gone far enough in the war on terror.” Cino says if Iraq is harboring terrorists, he’s all for invading the country. Still he thinks Bush is using the war on terrorism for political ends. “Terrorism’s been around for a long time; you’re never gonna stop it. Bush is just working on his next campaign, collecting videotape for his ads — ‘Look what I’m doing, hooray for me.’ ”
The fallout from 9/11 changed the lives of UAW Local 2325 members. They work for the Legal Aid Society, which provides services to those who can’t afford a lawyer. Its offices were across the street from the Twin Towers and are still vacant. The union, working with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and a private environmental testing firm, determined the building, though structurally undamaged, is contaminated with asbestos, benzene, decayed organic matter and heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury. Cleanup requires extensive interior demolition, and the insurance company is refusing to pay.
“I can’t believe ours is the only building surrounding the Trade Center that got contaminated with awful stuff,” says Elon Harpaz, 46, a vice president of the local and an attorney in the criminal appeals bureau. “I think in some of the other nearby buildings, the big-time corporate tenants where the workers weren’t unionized figured ‘we’ve got to get back in quickly,’ and I wonder about the long-term health of the employees of some of those companies. I was very glad that I’m a member of a union that’s strong and stood up for its workers.”
As the union’s point person on the cleanup, Charlotte Hitchcock has seen testing data that shows other buildings in the area — which have been reoccupied — were as severely contaminated as Legal Aid’s.
At the same time Legal Aid workers had to move to new offices spread across the city, they faced a heavier workload. “Sept. 11 created an increase in the need for our services, and we had to make sure we were there for our clients,” Hitchcock says. Those clients include people seeking assistance from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), and immigrants affected by the attacks and by the Justice Department’s attack on civil liberties.
“I’m not expressing an opinion on the war against terrorism, but as a union we have publicly stated that we do not support the attack on the civil constitutional rights of individuals which has happened as a result of the war on terrorism. Our role as lawyers is to defend people and protect the rights they have to due process,” Hitchcock says.
Bill Pickering, president of Local 259, which represents Cino and other technicians in the service departments of the city’s car dealerships, sees positive and negative aftereffects from the attacks of Sept. 11. “New York is truly a different place,” he says. “People are friendlier, they’re sharing their feelings, we’re solidified.” But he fears, “America is going to be different as long as we know it. We’re losing our freedom, our privacy, our liberties.”
Regarding the administration’s proposals for a new Department of Homeland Security, he’s shocked “the government wants to pull collective-bargaining rights from thousands of federal workers.”
Says Pickering, “It seems the government was fearing unions more than fearing terrorism.”
Phil Wheeler, director of Region 9A, agrees: “It’s crazy. He wants powers to be able to do things to people that you shouldn’t be doing to people anyway. Just because you're a union member doesn’t mean that you can’t do the job that needs to be done. People should have the right to have a union regardless of where they work.”
Pickering puts it in perspective: “The heroes on
Sept. 11 — the firemen, the cops — were union members.
The media didn't recognize it at the time, but the true heroes
were union members.”
Curtis Ellis is New York correspondent for the UAW’s
i.e.America radio network.
