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NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A group of workers at Best Super Cleaning, a demolition and construction cleanup company, are picketing outside the contractor’s Brooklyn offices to push for safer working conditions and higher wages.
Staff started organizing in May 2022 after graduating from a year-long labor leadership institute hosted by the Laundry Workers Center, a New York City non-profit that trains immigrants to organize their workplaces.
Wilson Diaz, a worker and organizer at BSC, said the company failed to provide workers with the tools and safety equipment necessary to do their jobs.
“We don’t have access to basic PPE [personal protective equipment] like masks, goggles. We work in very dangerous workplaces,” said Diaz in Spanish through a translator. “We’ve been working in very high [places] where we don’t have harnesses. We were risking our lives.”
A failure to provide PPE is a violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, though OSHA has not issued a citation for the alleged infractions.
When contacted, a person who declined to give his name told 1010 WINS the company has no comment on the allegations.
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Community activist groups like the Food Chain Workers Alliance, T’ruah, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the Street Vendor Project and others have been holding weekly pickets on Fridays at noon in front of one of BSC’s offices at 139 Tompkins Avenue in Bed-Stuy to pressure the company to negotiate higher wages with workers.
Aran said the groups called off the weekly pickets at the end of last year when management entered mediation with workers, but when those talks fell apart in January, the protests resumed.
The workers pass out flyers on their lunch break to rally community members to their cause and bolster the ranks of the picket line.
“I’m here in this company to support my family, my parents. I’m doing this hard work and risking my life,” said Diaz. “Right now, I don’t have any injury, but my body can be injured doing this work. And we don’t have a living wage. It impacts me a lot.”