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Legislation & Politics | ||
AFSCME Urges Congress to Ensure Safety of Legislative Branch Employees
INTRODUCTION Good morning Madam Chair and members of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee. I am Wally Reed, a Gardener at the U.S. Botanical Gardens and President of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 626. AFSCME is a labor organization that represents over 1.4 million workers, predominantly in the public sector. Among these, AFSCME represents over 9,000 employees in various federal agencies, including the Architect of the Capitol (AOC). Local 626 represents Architect of the Capitol employees, including laborers and custodial workers at the House and Senate Office Buildings, the Capitol, the Botanical Gardens, and the most recent addition to Local 626, the skilled trade employees at the AOC Library Buildings and Grounds. Our members ensure that your office is clean when you come to work each day; we maintain that jewel on Capitol Hill, the Botanical Gardens Conservatory; and we make sure that the Library of Congress collections and staff are kept in a safe environment. We are extremely proud of the work we do in maintaining the infrastructure of our democracy. An issue of great concern to our local union is the way that AOC Library Buildings and Grounds management is handling asbestos abatement. Earlier this year, asbestos was discovered on deck A and B of the Jefferson Building. In January 2007, a team of AOC Library and Grounds employees were assigned the task of removing the asbestos. The project was stopped for some reason and restarted on March 26. A team of employees worked for approximately two weeks to finish the project. The employees who worked on this project were heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) mechanics, not full-time hazard abatement specialists. These are skilled, hard-working and dedicated employees, and they have been trained in asbestos removal and have the necessary certifications. However, since they are rarely called upon to engage in this type of work, their experience level is much lower than that of the employees who engage in this type of dangerous work on a full-time basis. In working with hazardous materials such as asbestos, there is no room for mistakes. AFSCME Local 626 and the workers are concerned that they could be putting themselves and the Library of Congress staff in jeopardy because they do not have the breadth of experience that is gained from working full-time in hazard abatement. Currently, there are AOC shops that deal exclusively with hazard abatement in the Senate, House of Representatives, U.S. Capitol and the Capitol Power Plant. In the past, there was such a shop at the Library Buildings and Grounds, but it does not exist anymore. Because we are concerned for the safety of workers with insufficient experience who are being asked to perform the dangerous task of asbestos removal, we would propose one of the two following alternatives to current practices to ensure that the appropriate personnel are assigned the work of hazard abatement: 1. Re-establish a hazard abatement shop at the Library Buildings and Grounds. The shop should be staffed through competitive merit promotion procedures; or 2. Assign one of the shops in the other AOC jurisdictions the permanent responsibility for hazard abatement in the Library Buildings and ensure that it has the necessary complement of qualified, full-time staff to be able to adequately handle the new assignment. We believe that either of these proposals would remove the potential threat posed by the current arrangement and ensure the safety of legislative branch employees, as well as Members of Congress and their staff. I thank you for the opportunity to voice our concerns for the safety of these employees, and I would be happy to respond to any questions you may have. |
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