No answers for Sani2 workers

Approximately 75 sanitary worker jobs would be in jeopardy if Sani2 were dissolved.

Chris Connolly

The drive to dissolve Sanitary District 2 has several moving parts. The validity of signatures is being debated in court, the prospective cost savings that would come with dissolution are under dispute, and other discussions focus on whether the Town of Hempstead is equipped to handle garbage collection. In the meantime, approximately 75 sanitary workers face the prospect that their jobs would be in jeopardy if Sani2 were dissolved.

Jeff Rossbach, a recycler for the district, emailed the Herald, posing some pointed questions. “No one has guaranteed our jobs if there is a dissolution,” Rossbach wrote. “I took a position as a recycler to have job security. Is it ok for jobs to be lost? Are people’s jobs less important than saving a couple of bucks on a tax bill? The garbage and recycling has to be picked up every week, why can’t the current workers continue doing the job?”

Rossbach also wondered if Laura Mallay, executive director of Residents for Efficient Special Districts, would be willing to “sign a written guarantee stating the workers will not lose their jobs?”

The Herald put these questions to Mallay, and to David Segal, communications coordinator for the Long Island Progressive Coalition. While neither has the authority to guarantee job security for Sani2 field workers, both suggested that efforts at reform were aimed at the top of the ladder, not the bottom.

“There are no guarantees,” Mallay said. “The only pledge I can make is that we’ll stand by these workers and fight for them. We believe it’s possible to preserve those jobs, though. We don’t feel that’s where the waste is.”

Mallay explained that several years ago, RESD met with Bill Flanagan, then the head of Civil Service Employees Association local 880, the union that represents Town of Hempstead workers, and reached a verbal agreement to protect Sani2’s workers should the district be dissolved. Flanagan has since died, but Mallay pointed out that his successors were also at the meeting and would, she believed, honor the agreement.