Beneath the Big Apple

District Council 37 represents 125,000 municipal and state employees. Some work below the ground. Labor photographer Earl Dotter and Public Employee writer Clyde Weiss take us into the strange and often dangerous places in which these AFSCME members work.

New York

In this city of soaring skyscrapers, they work in its depths. Subterranean mechanics, civil engineers, sewage treatment workers, exterminators, tunnel maintainers, geologists, water plant inspectors — they help keep the city running like well-oiled machinery.

They are members of DC 37, spread among several AFSCME locals, whose jobs are as diverse as their workplaces but who share a common bond. They work — at least part of the time — below New York — beneath its streets, under its buildings, inside its tunnels.

Maintaining the Flow
Protecting the City's Health
Keeping the Traffic Running
Into the Deep