Should NYS move offices, workers to Freedom Tower?

We are pleased to introduce a new Communicator feature: Point-Counterpoint which will appear from time to time.
In an effort to spark interest and discussion among members about timely issues, we are inviting PEF members to submit their views on one side or the other.

The question addressed here is whether state agencies should, or should not move their operations and employees into space in the new Freedom Tower which is planned for the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, killing 34 PEF members and thousands of others.

Although a resolution was adopted at the PEF convention in October opposing the forced transfer of state employees into the Freedom Tower, the broader issue will likely continue to be a subject of public discussion for at least several years.

Send your position on the next topic — Should PEF be involved in issues not directly related to working conditions, job security and benefits? — to The Communicator, PO Box 12414, Albany, NY 12212-2414, or e-mail it to communicator@pef.org. Please be concise (250 words or less). We will publish the two best opposing submissions.

Should NYS move offices, workers to Freedom Towers?

Yes; Fear is true danger we must conquer

WESLEY BARTLETT
PEF Executive Board member, Division 305 Council Leader

My career with New York began May 31, 1973, on the 29th floor in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center, which was so new the concourse was still under construction.

Office areas, however, were quite comfortable. High above street level with few partitions, we had views and openness that few in Manhattan enjoy.

Employed by the state Bureau of Disability Determinations, by 1977, I worked on the 83rd floor with even more impressive views before leaving for a promotion in Albany.

Obviously, the issue is not whether PEF members should work in comfortable surroundings like those I enjoyed.

Rather, the issue is fear. Some, surviving Sept. 11 suffered trauma so great no one else can comprehend it, much less judge their feelings. If their offices move to the Freedom Tower, New York owes it to them to provide comparable positions elsewhere without career interruption.
However, we — as a union and as Americans — need to overcome the fears created that day.

For too long, fear has changed us into a country that tortures detainees, maintains secret prisons and has lost the respect of allies worldwide.
Fear re-elected an administration in Washington that works to destroy our social safety net, dismantling government programs and returning billions of tax dollars to America’s wealthiest 1 percent.

To change course, we must conquer these fears. I can do no better than to quote a previous administration facing a different crisis: “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

No; Don’t put NYS employees at risk

PAUL STEIN
PEF Executive Board member, Division 199 Council Leader

The offices of state employees should not be moved into the Freedom Tower.

Why? Most importantly, to assure the physical safety and protect the mental health of the state work force.

Thirty-four PEF members died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, others were physically injured while fleeing the twin towers, and hundreds more were psychologically traumatized by their emergency evacuation from offices in the World Trade Center and nearby buildings.

Plans for the World Trade Center site include construction of the Freedom Tower, a building taller than the former twin towers and widely acknowledged to be a prime target for a future terrorist attack.

State employees should not have to needlessly risk their lives each day by being forced to work in a building that is a major terrorist target.

State employees should not have to needlessly live in fear that when they arrive at work they have a bull’s-eye on their backs.

Also, it would be a waste of the taxpayers’ money for New York state to pay almost 150 percent of the current market rate for state agency offices in downtown Manhattan (based on figures reported in an Associated Press article of September 17, 2006) to lease office space in the Freedom Tower.

State employees should not be used as political pawns in lower Manhattan or anywhere.

State employees must not be forced into the Freedom Tower, an unsafe and unhealthy work environment. PEF has a duty to prevent this from happening.