NYC Blizzard Cleanup Intentionally Hampered by NY Sanitation Worker's Union?

While I was waiting out the Dec 26th blizzard in a far more sedate corner of the Empire State, the Big Apple ground to a standstill- although it's looking as though mother nature alone wasn't to blame for the paralysis in the days following the storm.

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. [snip]

New York's Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process -- and pad overtime checks -- which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.

They said crews normally would have been more aggressive in combating a fierce, fast-moving blizzard like the one that barreled in on Sunday and blew out the next morning.

The slowdown left an estimated 16-20 inches of snow piled up on many NYC arteries and surface streets, making it treacherous sledding for emergency vehicles from the FDNY or NYPD. A 75 year old woman in Queens who was having difficulty breathing and a newborn baby delivered in the lobby of a Brooklyn apartment building died while waiting for EMS personnel to make their way through the accumulated snow.

There have also been reports of Sanitation employees and their supervisors in Brooklyn buying beer and waiting out the blizzard in their warm vehicles while passengers in a stranded bus had to ride out the storm a block away.

On Tuesday, the US Attorney's office in Brooklyn announced that they would be opening up a criminal investigation into the NYC Department of Sanitation's response in the wake of the blizzard. The DA's in Brooklyn and Queens are also launching their own criminal probe.

[hat tip: Yid With the Lid; Jammie Wearing Fool]