Walking Back the New York City Snow Plowing 'Union Slow Down' Conspiracy

This initial story was only circulated through the Murdoch propaganda machine; it doesn't deserve to be called news or journalism. The large mostly right-wing fawning followers of this pseudo-news do not check nor hold these sources accountable. This first emerged as a Murdoch owned New York Post exclusive, claiming a scoop that there was an organized union slow down in plowing streets, a slow down which resulted in at least two deaths, due to the inability of emergency vehicles to get through the streets.  The story was, of course, picked up in lockstep by the other Murdoch propagandists - Fox News, etc.  From there the right-wing blogosphere ran with it as fact, not fact checking.


Here is the Post claim:

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts. "They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important," said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.
Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department -- and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan -- at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents. “They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.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.”

Here is the initial problem with this story, other than it comes from the unreliable, uncorrecting Murdoch media propaganda machine.  This big news story relies on anonymous sources who supposedly told Republican City Councilman Dan Halloran; this is a double flaw - single sourcing, which is NOT journalism; and the fact that this is only based on second hand, anonymous sources. Second hand anonymous sources are the bread and butter of right wing blogosphere accusation hoaxes. The Post only spoke with Halloran, not his anonymous sources.

As a result, we have no fewer than four investigations which have been launched.  Once again, this duplication of investigations into an unsubstantiated accusation is costly.  I predict that costly but useless investigations will be the norm, the consistent pattern, of the right in 2011.  This will produce a senseless waste of tax payers money, to no purpose, other than satisfying right wing paranoia.  Specifically, it provides a chance to union-bash, part of the calculated strategy of the right wing narrative that is unconcerned with fact, but totally concerned with whipping up a base with false accusations.


In contrast, we have statements from the Union, both supervisors and staff denying the accusation, and statements from current Mayor Bloomberg, and former Mayor and failed GOP presidential candidate Rudy Guiliani that they do not find this a reasonable or plausible claim.  From the same Post article:

Bloomberg, speaking earlier today on Staten Island, had dismissed the allegations.
"I don't know whether anybody, you know, one person or two people, slowed down," he said. "Probably you'll never know. But the men I know who work for the Department of Sanitation take great pride in what they do. They work hard ... I would send them out in the next storm without thinking twice."

Guiliani spoke out against this accusation on the January 7, 2011 MSNBC's Good Morning Joe: 

If there was a slowdown, and I’m not sure there was, I would doubt it. Because I know the Sanitation Department. That just doesn’t sound right to me, that there was some deliberate slowdown.

And now, with no less than four investigations taking place from the local level to the federal level, we have this very different quote from Councilman Halloran about what he was told, according to the local ABC television channel 7 news : 

"What they did was they said we're not going to be on top of you, we're not going to push you," said New York City Councilman Daniel Halloran.

That is a whole helluva lot different than organizing a sick-in, or a slow-down of snow plowing specifically as a protest by supervisors of changes to their status.  There is a further claim that city managers did not send out plowing crews soon enough, and that supervisors weren't aggressive enough in beginning plowing before things got too bad to be effective.  However there is a much more reasonable explanation for that, including the weather reports which kept changing as to how much snow was predicted and when it was going to fall.  Snow plow operators get overtime, and they get even more overtime working on their days off, on holidays and so on.  Many of these plow drivers were putting in 100 hour work weeks.  Sheesh, with those kind of hours, with that kind of exhaustion, damn straight the supervisors were not going to be riding them.  Moreover, in explanation if not defense of the decisions at the upper levels which delayed the plowing, both management and supervisors, there is a much more plausible budget explanation for their reluctance to call in people over a holiday than this stupid claim of a protest.  Snow removal for this blizzard is already costing half the New York City budget for the entire snow season, and it is still early days with more snow likely.  New York City for this 2010-2011 snow season has a budget for snow removal of 'only' $39 million, and has already had three major snow falls, one of which was the Christmas blizzard, with typically 48% of the budget being spent on overtime.  So....managing overtime, keeping it as low as possible is crucial to making the budget stretch across the entire plowing season.  Last year's snow budget ran over the budgeted amount of $38.8 million to an eventual $63 million, with less snow last year than what is predicted for this snow season.

This makes it plausible that while the city may have waited a little too long, in hopes of having most of the plowing done at the cheaper pay rate, attempting to minimize the budget-busting overtime, they might have made an honest mistake in timing.  Snow plowing every year in New York City results in angry people, not just this season, frankly.  New Yorkers, nice as I have found them individually, can be a contentious bunch of people, no doubt the inevitable result of that many people living in such a densely populated environment.

So, while these exhaustive - and expensive - investigations may turn up an isolated individual bad snow plow driver, this pretext of union bashing conspiracies promoted by the Murdoch propaganda machine and Councilman Halloran are far from fair (or plausible) given the long, hard cold hours away from their families over the holidays that these plow drivers put in.  I predict this will be yet another false accusation from the right wing disinformation machine - but lets wait to see what the no-less-than-four investigations turn up on that to see if my prediction is correct.  If I'm wrong - I'll correct it here, and eat crow (no salt, no ketchup).

But given the budget, and the hours put in, and the amount of snow and how much fell and when...I don't think I need to keep a plate or knife and fork at the ready.  Stay tuned though - you can bet like the other updates, I'll be following this story, and posting developments here.  Because this is something an investigation CAN determine, and so far, I haven't seen any investigations that supported these kinds of accusations.  And I most certainly haven't seen anyone on the right who routinely posts any kind of correction to these stories, least of all the Murdoch newspaper empire or Fox News.  Or the local, state or national right wing blogosphere, or the right wing talking heads on the radio.

I'm looking forward, after the investigation, to the pleasure of adding this to my hoax/false accusation list...