Public Employee Press

Letters to the editor

Exterminate pay gap

Good day, I am an Exterminator licensed by New York State. I work for the Dept. of Correction, and I share the same job title with the Exterminators at the New York City Housing Authority.

I and my fellow Exterminators in Local 768 demand to know why the NYCHA exterminators make $10,000 more then we do.

The risks I take (contact with inmates) and the services that I provide (protecting health and safety by containing rodents and insects such as bed bugs for officers, inmates, and civilian employees) mean that we should be making more or at least equal pay with the exterminators at NYCHA. What do we do?

Frank Williams
Exterminator, Local 768

Editor’s note: The union is aware of this unfair situation and is working hard to raise the pay of DC 37 Exterminators.

Parent Coordinator’s poem on the DOE

My wife is a teacher and UFT member, and I am a former Dept. of Education Parent Coordinator and union member who often finds himself reading your publication.

One good fruit that I feel my experience at DOE bore was the following poem, which speaks of our experience as professionals within the system.

This poem is dedicated to the brave but unfortunate souls in the DOE as well as to the students who are being served inadequately by the system.

NYCDOE

With Dreams of growing into a strong tree, a forest,
The young sapling was too soon truncated;
Uprooted like a weed, despite being a flower,
Aborted like a bad seed
Never to grow apples or knowledge
Of good and evil,
Banished from the Garden of Eden,
From amidst the fires of Hell itself,
Cast out into the world to
Find better ground not
Covered by permafrost.
“Oh Heaven...oh well...”
The result only time will tell,
But I know —
NYCDOE, “it’s our loss!”

Francis Lora