Union keeps pressure on officials to move workers to safety

With a countless number of state employees victimized by a silent stalker at 25 Sigourney Street in Hartford, Connecticut’s Administrative & Residual Employees Union (A&R) has petitioned Gov. Jodi Rell to relocate the building’s more than 1,000 workers.

From the union’s perspective, it’s a reasonable request. The stalker has been identified yet continues to elude authorities, and the dangers workers face are well documented.

The culprit: fungi, bacteria, dust and other allergens largely resulting from structural deficiencies that invited chronic water leaks. The building has a rap sheet dating back to 1995 when state workers started occupying the building—and started getting sick. The record of more than 30 studies, reports and inspections conducted by various authorities, including the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), is posted on the Connecticut Department of Public Works (DPW) Web site. “This is the most studied building in the world, according to NIOSH,” says A&R president Mike Winkler, who also is a member of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council.

A&R member Anna Crawford who works for the Department of Revenue Services (DRS), one of the three state government agencies occupying the building, says water leaks have been so pervasive that, during severe rain storms, employees have been told “not to turn their computers on because there’s standing water [on the floor] and they could get shocked.”

Doctors, both private physicians and specialists at the University of Connecticut Health Center, have substantiated the union’s charges that 25 Sigourney Street is a sick building—more than 200 workers are being treated for varying degrees of respiratory ailments and skin irritation; and a handful of members with doctors’ orders have been allowed to work from satellite locations.

“It is shameful what has happened to our members,” says attorney Brian A. Doyle of Ferguson & Doyle, the law firm that has been working with AFT Connecticut and A&R on this issue. “Some workers have become very sick—forced to retire in their 40s and 50s. They have permanent respiratory problems that are very serious.”

The state has spent more than $7 million on piecemeal remediation over the last several years. But because there are no scientific standards for indoor mold and bacteria, state officials refuse to move workers out of the building, says Crawford.

From the union’s perspective, absent guidelines, state officials have a library of documentation, stacks of worker’s compensation claims and a workforce with a high incidence of allergy and respiratory conditions—all of which indicate there’s a problem.

A&R delivered its petition to the governor in August after legislation that would have required the state to relocate workers to an alternate work site failed. The union also is working with state Sen. Edith Prague to secure legislative relief during the coming session. Other A&R-represented employees in the building work for the Department of Social Services and the Connecticut Homeland Security Division.