Written By : Jane Jamison

Newborn Baby and 75-year old woman die due to long waits

Union slow-down blamed for failure to remove snow

A personal story of mine accompanies this disgraceful event in New York City. I have an “experience” with New York City blizzards and union thugs dating from a Christmas-to-New-Year’s trip to New York in December, 2000. I haven’t been back to New York since it happened. (scroll down)

The extremely slow snow removal in New York City, which is being blamed for the death of a new born infant and a 75-year-old woman who waited 3 hours for an ambulance, has been a deliberate act….

The New York Post says Department of Sanitation bosses are protesting budget cuts and taking out their anger on the people who pay their salaries:

Shamed sanitation workers owned up to the go-slow to City Councilman Dan Halloran and said ploughs were kept higher than road surfaces and whole streets were skipped to compound the problems.

Speaking to the New York Post, Mr Halloran said: ‘They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labour issues are more important.’

He added that the workers – three plough operators and two Department of Transportation supervisers – ‘did not want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation’.

Mr Halloran added: ‘They were told [by supervisers] to take off routes and not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner.

‘They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.’

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Infant dead in NYC, mayor’s snow removal plan blamed

Mayor Bloomberg, who spends an inordinate amount of time MICRO-protecting the lives of New Yorkers, with his crusades against public smoking, salt  and  trans fats in food, shows once again the failure of liberalism: overemphasis on the “control” of citizens, while failing miserably to provide the bare minimum of government services.

When I heard the past few days that travellers were still stranded in New York, in subways and at airports, because snow removal was so slow, I began to get suspicious that the slow clean-up was a work stoppage by some union or another. I was suspicious because of my personal experience in New York City during a blizzard between Christmas and New Year’s Eve in December of 2000:

I waited at a gate window with my husband and two kids and thousands of others at JFK airport. Days later we would be told this was the worst blizzard in 30 years. While we waited at our gate for our departure (the storm had just begun two hours before) we watched as Port Authority workers suddenly pulled up in their snowplows outside our window and headed inside.

I happened to be at one of their entry doors as they came in. Everyone was naturally anxious about flights and what to do, so I asked the group of three snowplowmen what was happening on the runways and whether they thought flights would be cancelled.

(Eventually the airport was shut down for two days, but that “decomposition” in the day hadn’t been made yet.) They looked at me with disdain, when I asked, “How soon till the planes can take off, do you think?”

“Lady, we’re LEAVING. We are OUTTA here!” said one.

I was quizzical, not understanding. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Lady, we ain’t plowin’ anymore, we’re goin’ home,” he responded. “Why? Do you mean, your shift is done?” (Again, I just wasn’t “getting the message.” I still assumed the “best,” that these workers were taking a break or maybe finishing their shift for the day. That was naïve on my part.

“No, lady. We are DONE. We ain’t plowin’ anymore in this storm, we’re leaving. Call Rudy (Giuliani, the mayor at the time) and ask him why if you have a complaint.”

My mouth was open as I recall, dumbfounded. The sneers on the three men’s faces I can still remember. “So, are we all going to be stuck here?” I wanted to make sure I understood where this was heading.

“Lady, Happy F—-n’ New Year from New York!” the three of them laughed. One stomped his snow boots on the floor, maybe for emphasis.

With that tiny bit of information, I told my husband our flight would likely be cancelled soon and we should make plans for a hotel and to get back to downtown where we had just left hours before. Long story, but we somehow found our luggage in the huge piles that were forming downstairs, dragged it outside with our two young kids, and I flagged down a city bus to take us downtown. He was already full, but I begged him on behalf of our kids. He was kind enough to shove our bags on, we stood in the aisles of the bus and we were dumped with everyone else at Grand Central Station. Snow was piled high by then and traffic snarled. Passengers were left with nowhere to stay. I dragged bags over 3 foot drifts around the corner and spotted the Grand Hyatt Hotel. With husband and kids in tow, we slogged across the street that even cabs were having trouble driving on. There were two rooms left at the hotel. We got one of them. The other people at JFK were stuck there (as I recall) almost two full days. Toilets were filled, food ran out at the concessions, people were sleeping on floors.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani took to a helicopter over the city and went on the news that first night to rail against the Port Authority and other unions which were “slowing” down the snow removal. I can’t remember what he did, but he kicked them into gear and got the city moving again.

We ended up staying for (“Happy Fu—-g”) New Year’s Eve on Times Square in New York City. (we certainly couldn’t fly out) I have been a fan of Rudy Giuliani’s ever since and I haven’t visited New York since then.

Cross-posted at UNCOVERAGE.net

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