English High School - Blue and Blue / Record Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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STAFF PHOTO BY MIKE ADASKAVEG aORY? A Big Dig worker reads the Herald while on the clock yesterday. WAKEUP CALL FOR BIG DIG SNOOZE CREW Pol: Naps better nod continue By CASEY ROSS An irate congressman and outraged Big Dig overseers demanded immediate firings and stepped-up inspections of downtown work sites following a Herald investigation that found workers sleeping, reading and joyriding while collecting $49-an-hour pay- checks. “These (workers) should be fired and their supervisors should be fired, U.S. Rep, Michael Capuano (D-Somerville) said yes- terday, “This project has had problems from Day One, This is the last thing they need, and they should know that. Massachusetts Turnpike Authority offi- cials responsible for overall management of the $14.6 billion Big Dig promised a crack- down on contractors failing to police snoozing employees. Spokeswoman Mariel- len Bums said the agency is setting up a hotline so members of the public can call in their own complaints about Big Dig waste, inefficiency and sloth. A five-day Herald surveillance of work sites along Atlantic Avenue found rampant misconduct by high-paid heavy equipment operators, including napping, reading and sitting idle for hours at a time. In some cases, workers slept in full view of passing commuters whose tax dollars are paying their wages. ‘It’s shameful, Turnpike Authority Vice Chairman Jordan Levy said. “We hired Bechtel (Parsons BrinckerhofD to oversee this and they ' ve done a lousy job. I’ve been talking about this for six years now and that it ' s continuing to happen is mind-boggling. Levy and other top officials vowed to investigate work supervisors who failed to police employees on their work sites. The sites monitored by the Herald are managed by Modem Continental a cash-strapped contractor now under the managerial over- sight of Jay Cashman Inc. The workers on the sites are repairing a steam line damaged during prior construc- tion. Despite continual delays and missed deadlines on the project, little or no pro- gress was made during several days of the Herald’s surveillance. Modem Continental said yesterday it has contacted union officials and begun a for- mal investigation. A statement said: “Mod- em Continental does not and will not toler- ate this behavior. It does an injustice to all of our employees who do tremendous work every day. Capuano said controversy surrounding shoddy management and construction blunders will only cause more problems for Massachusetts on Capitol Hill, where the Big Dig is an infamous example of govern- ment waste and abuse. “I can guarantee I will get more grief in Washington, he said. Jon Carlisle of the state Executive Office of Transportation said, “This is a manage- ment issue. If workers aren ' t being directed to do the appropriate work on projects, then it boils down to a management issue.” .entral Artery dolts sleep on a pillow of your cash Don’t kill the job. Some hacks at the Pike claim to be shocked, shocked that Big Dig workers are sleeping on the job. But the pay- roll pa- triots at 10 Park don’t want to kill the job any more than the snoozing crane opera- tors, or the methadone-tak- ing truck drivers, or the state reps’ dads, or all the ex-con armored-car robbers from South Boston who’ve Howie CARR gone straight, sort of, on the Big Dig payroll. Fat Matt Amorello was so distraught when he saw the photo on the front page of the Herald yesterday that now he wants tollbooths on 1-495. Then he opened the paper and saw more sleep- ing workers and decided the state needs to toll 1-91 too. The Big Dig — look for the union label. You ' ve heard the old expression, “Your tax dol- lars at work.” Now you can see your tax dollars asleep. I’m sure the union mem- bers all had good excuses for their sloth: “I was up late last night at Trav’s time. Where does it say in the contract I got to be awake? “Does this mean it’s too late for me to go out on a slip-and-fall? “You can’t fire me — I’m a Democrat.” “But I know Sal DiMasi — I been to his house in Need- ham. “Jeez, boss, I ' m all worn out from drivin’ out Route 2 to Devens to see Cashman every day.” That would be George Cashman, the gangster and former Massport board member who used to run Teamsters Local 25 and hang out with Paul Cellucci. Cashman now resides at the federal prison at Devens — former home of Jackie Bulger. The only thing that’s real- ly surprising about this lat- est batch of $49-an-hour layabouts is that they’ve be- come so brazen they are now taking naps out in the open, in broad daylight. The pinky-rings used to have the decency to go hide some- where before they dozed off. The Massport electricians who got fired had a little shed where they snoozed through their shifts. Remember when Whitey Bulger was somehow able to secure public-sector jobs for all of his cocaine dealers . . . so they could file for disabi- lity pensions? The cops ac- tually arrested one Bulger minion while he was sleeping — on the job — at the DPW yard on Frontage Road. Whitey’s drug dealer ap- parently wanted to get a good night ' s sleep before not showing up for his other no- show public job, at the MWRA, or maybe it was the Boston Housing Authority. So this is just more busi- ness as usual at the Big Dig. I have a large matted photo- graph in my office given to me by Jim “Boo Hoo” Kera- siotes. I used to ask the for- mer Big Dig boss why they needed so many cranes when they were never used. He finally sent me the pho- tograph, with the inscrip- tion, “Why aren’t any of these cranes moving?” That was 1997. The cranes still aren’t moving. And the price tag is up to $15 billion. But hey, this is why the tolls have to go up. If those of us who p ay the tolls for an unsafe road we never use aren’t willing to come up with $49 an hour to support these slugs, they’ll have to go on welfare — as if they aren’t there already. Meanwhile, I’m sure Fat Matt is “not a happy cus- tomer,” as he once put it after an earlier scandal So, as someone said yesterday, they’ll dig up a few more streets, after which the workers and a detail cop will stare into the hole for three or four months. Then they’ll fill the trenches back in and finally rearrange the orange barrels. And after a , few. months, they’ll dig up the: same streets again. Just don ' t kill the job. Hey Fat Matt, when’s the next ribbon-cutting? WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2005 BOSTON HERALD

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