October 4–10, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 3
Our Perspective
Car Wash Bill Will Protect
Workers From Injustices
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, UFCW
Banning the tip credit in the car
wash industry downstate would
help lift up 5,000 mostly immigrant
car wash workers in New York.
Governor Cuomo was right about how
Twitter: @sappelbaum
the current system shortchanges workers.
The so-called “tip credit” that allows
employers downstate to pay car wash
workers below minimum wage based upon
the idea that customers will make up the
difference in tips. But in reality, this often
results in workers taking home below
minimum wage, due to lack of tips,
employers dipping into the tip jar, and a
confusing web of 8 different possible subminimum
wages in New York. That confusion
often provides employers with an outrageous
license to steal, and even well-meaning
employers have sometimes run afoul of the
law due to its complicated nature.
Banning the so-called “tip credit” in the
car wash industry downstate would help lift
up 5,000 mostly immigrant car wash
workers in New York. We applaud the
actions of the state legislature this past
summer to end this injustice,
and we urge Governor
Cuomo to sign the Car
Wash Bill into law to
protect car wash
workers and their
families from wage theft
and underpayment.
The Car Wash Bill 2019, which would
end subminimum wages and help
eliminate wage theft for thousands of
downstate New York car wash workers, was
passed by the New York State Senate and
Assembly in June. With car wash workers
downstate still being underpaid and still
vulnerable to potential wage theft, it is crucial
that this bill becomes law as soon as possible.
Labor activists, progressive elected
officials, and workers aren’t the only ones
who support car wash workers in their fight
for better jobs and fair pay. In 2015, none
other than Pope Francis met with car wash
workers in Harlem to show his support,
bringing worldwide attention to a mostlyimmigrant
group of hardworking people who
struggle to put food on their families’ tables
due to underpayment and exploitation.
Tip credit can even be used as
a vehicle for wage theft, with
disreputable business owners
stealing tips and violating
minimum wage laws.
Numerous New York elected officials
including New York City’s mayor, New York
City Council members and state officials have
stood with car wash workers. And, last year,
during a public teleconference town hall,
Governor Cuomo acknowledged that tip credit
can even be used as a vehicle for wage theft,
with disreputable business owners stealing
tips and violating minimum wage laws.
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Waste Management showed off their recently-launched green locomotive at their Varick Avenue yards in
Williamsburg on Sept. 26.
Garbage dump express
New fuel-effi cient locomotive rolls out in Williamsburg
Photo by Trey Pentecost
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Waste honchos at a trash hauling business
showed off a new “green” locomotive
at a Williamsburg industrial yard
on Sept. 26, which will help keep Kings
County clean in more ways than one,
according to an executive at the garbage
company.
“It’s a much cleaner burning locomotive,
much more fuel efficient,” said Jim
Van Woert, director of diversion strategies
at Waste Management.
The new low-emission train will halve
the amount of pollutants Waste Management
pumps into the air while hauling
trash from the Varick Avenue train
yard to a transferring station in Queens,
Van Woert said.
The company — which hauls mostly
residential and some commercial garbage
for the city — purchased the $2.9
million locomotive with help from a
$1 million grant from the federal Environmental
Protection Agency in late
2018.
The new locomotives replace units
from the mid-1970s and run at the federal
agency’s Tier 4 emissions standards,
which demands reduced levels of the
harmful pollutant sulfur to 15 parts per
million, according to the Environmental
Protection Agency .
The green engine runs at 2,350 horsepower,
and generates enough spare juice
to produce torque in a smaller train unit,
called a slug, which together allow the
train to haul a whopping 2,000 tons of
municipal solid waste per day, according
to James Bonner, president of the
New York and Atlantic Railway, the
private company that owns the freight
railroads.
This reporter joined train conductor
Jeffrey Huelstrunk as he guided the hulking
trash hauler at a leisurely 10-milesper
hour through the industrial hinterlands
of Williamsburg and Bushwick,
occasionally stopping at street crossings
to give his colleague a chance to
halt traffic.
Every oncein a while a motorist would
idle their vehicle too close the tracks,
but that just gave the engineer an opportunity
to lay onto the train’s awesome
horn.
“It happens,” he said.
The green train won’t revolutionize
the waste collecting business, but Brooklynites
living along the tracks should be
able to breath easier thanks to the new
green train, Van Woert said.
“We’re doing the same thing every
day, we’re just doing it with less of an impact
on the environment and the neighboring
community,” he said.
Photo by Trey Pentecost
Reporter Kevin Duggan got a front-row seat on a recent ride with
community leaders and politicians.
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