The battered reputation of City Hall employees came under attack once again Wednesday with a report from investigators who spied garbage collection workers loafing for hours each day, taking long lunches at home, drinking beer from plastic cups and even urinating on the street.
Confronted by imminent layoffs due to budget cuts, labor leaders accused the city’s internal investigators of joining Mayor Daley in a witch hunt, with the report to be used as a pretext for trimming the payroll. The unions also blamed a lack of proper oversight, starting with the 50 Streets and Sanitation Department ward superintendents.
Many City Council members said they were not at all surprised by the findings — “Figures,” said Ald. Howard Brookins (21st). But they defended their ward superintendents.
Top mayoral aides sounded their own familiar theme, expressing strong disgust and promising to punish wrongdoers — while assuring taxpayers that the problem is really not widespread.
The blame fest began with the release of the report from Inspector General David Hoffman, whose workers spent a week in each of 10 wards, following 77 garbage truck drivers and 145 laborers. The report said workers didn’t work for an average of two hours during each eight-hour shift.
Hoffman pointedly noted that the typical city truck driver makes $30.70 an hour, or $63,856 per year, while the average laborer is paid $28.92 an hour, or $60,154 per year.
Such coveted union posts were at the center of the federal case against Daley patronage chief Robert Sorich, convicted in 2006 in a “massive fraud” to rig city hiring in favor of campaign workers for the mayor’s machine. Former Streets and Sanitation commissioner Al Sanchez is awaiting trial on charges that he played a big role in the political hiring scheme.
The inspector general’s report concluded that the fraud probably extended to every ward in the city and could cost more than $20 million a year.
“Let’s not just say, ‘There’s a few bad apples and the whole department is bad.’ It’s not,” said Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Michael Picardi, who ripped the ward superintendents in a meeting Wednesday.
Union officials stressed the report’s placement of primary blame on “extremely poor supervision.”
“My members are out there to do a job and they do the job well,” said Lou Phillips, business agents for Laborers Local 1001.
Phillips said city officials have told him to expect 302 of his 1,100 members to be laid off after Daley proposes his 2009 budget next week. Chicago Federation of Labor leader Dennis Gannon thinks the timing of the report is not coincidental.
“It’s a cheap shot,” Gannon said.
Hoffman said the investigation was prompted by complaints and predates talk of layoffs. Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) and Ald. George Cardenas (12th) acknowledged their wards were among those targeted.
“People have to put in a full day,” Waguespack said. “There has to be a better system.”
