Percy Action

February 6, 1989 Al

February 6, 1989 Al Percy North River Water Pollution Control Plant Department of Environmental Protection 135th Street and 12th Ave. New York, New York Dear Mr. Percy: I want to extend a belated thank you and congratulate you for your fine display of courage and intelligence as you saved the life of your co-worker Brian Malunat. You demonstrated tremendous presence of mind in handling the situation as you did. I am very pleased to know that the Department of Environmental Protection has in its employ a committed and exemplary worker such as yourself. Not only does DEP benefit from this sort of outstanding behavior as a whole, but your fellow workers are clearly very fortunate to have you amongst them. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to the work at DEP and for your willingness to go the extra mile for a fellow employee. Sincerely, HARVEY W. SCHULTZ Commissioner cc: Asst. Commissioner Edward Wagner Louis Tazzi 124. Grateful that he found work and it was meaningful work at the water pollution treatment plants he worked at the barrier and interface between modern industrial, manufacturing, commercial and residential society and its waste and excrement, and our planet, its natural resources and its waterways. “My difficult and dirty chores in excrement stenched confines, shoveling and mopping terrible wastes was so that only clean water, a continuous and life sustaining resource, returned to nature, right back into the environment and into the homes of the living. I worked through the dusty air at the facilities, at times feeling as though I was mentally drowning in the waste flooded bowels of the city of New York, produced by upstream living. I’ve anguished on why I hadn't simply left and since I remained and waited, why I had not done something to assert myself?” 32

125. Percy was not promoted, remaining like underground vermin, making a daily descent into the working bowels of the city, the river of slime. 126. Everyone is connected to the steady flow into the sewers and equally connected to the outflow of cleansed water running out. And while society stands (or sits) unaware, on both ends of the input and output, there is an unseen constant interface which keeps the flow between modern society and our planet moving, people like Percy. Percy is of the machinery that allows urban modern living to coexist with the natural elements of our world, earth and nature. The ever-evolving purification of water increased the life expectancy and elimination of many diseases at its beginning and helped create and grow cities and industries. 127. Throw in the plum bob to the sewer tanks and it will scarcely reach bottom. There will always be a dark swirling pool of the wastes of society to which everyone, whether they realize it or not, is connected - by the device called a toilet. 128. Percy is what society relies upon! And yet “I kept my eyes lowered, mumbling, pardon me, pardon me," all the while in the many years that he waited for the promised apprenticeship.” Waited, insignificant and yet part of something so significant. 129. Percy never got what he was promised. In 1974 in his landmark Percy Action he won the right for unskilled workers to receive apprenticeship training so they could benefit from good jobs while enjoying the pride that comes from building and maintaining critical infrastructure. Skills are the key to freedom and liberty. Despite a favorable ruling, the apprenticeship never happened. “I speak for the Class, we were denied.” 130. The trade that Percy sought to apprentice in was a heavy equipment, operating engineer. When he sought apprenticeship training as a heavy equipment operator he was directed to a Mr. Daniel Murphy who was associated with the New York City Building Trades Association. Murphy advised him to look into becoming an apprentice, but with no success. 131. Since the decision of Judge Lasker in the Percy Action, there has been virtually no meaningful training, no equal employment opportunity 33