Department of Homeless Services laborers tasked with helping move the Big Apple’s least fortunate in and out of shelters are wearing trash bags to protect themselves from the coronavirus — as they demand additional protection from city officials.
The members of AFSCME District 37 Local 924 shot the photos as they moved a family from a Bronx shelter and submitted them to DHS officials to support their claims they need protective bodysuits to remain safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
“At the end of the day, you need to protect yourself by any means necessary and you have to put garbage bags around you to do that, you need to do that,” said Local 924 President Kyle Simmons. “If you’re going to do the job, you’ve got to protect yourself — or do the best you can.”
Simmons says his members need protective gowns for their clothing, commonly known as Tyvek suits, to stay safe while working with the homeless and moving their belongings.
The city, he says, has refused to provide them for the laborers while giving them to other employees.
Simmons said that at least three of his members who work out of DHS’s facilities at the old Greenpoint Hospital in Brooklyn have tested positive for the disease.
Emails and photos provided by Simmons show its the latest volley between the union and DHS management over the amount of protection provided to laborers during the first two months of the COVID-19 crisis, which has killed nearly 20,000 in the five boroughs alone.
On March 17, one laborer wrote to Simmons that DHS management at the former hospital had said they “cannot wear [a] mask while working with this pandemic going on.”
He added: “I just like this in writing and who is giving this order that we can’t wear them to protect us and our families.”
Simmons forward the complaint to a slew of managers at DHS and its parent agency, the Department of Social Services, writing: “I expect whomever it may be that is taking it upon themselves to not be responsible during this crisis to please [correct] it or I will start sending names directly to the Mayor’s Office.”
He emailed DHS officials again on April 15 to complain that a manager at the Greenpoint site was failing to provide “PPE and deodorizer to disinfect bags being carried by hand,” adding the manager’s decision “jeopardize[s] the lives of workers under her command.”
A DHS official responded six days later that he had been informed that masks were being distributed on a weekly basis.
“The agency doesn’t believe that we need anything,” Simmons told The Post on Thursday, referring to DHS. “They just refuse to do anything — in fact, they threatened to discipline the workers for putting on masks at the beginning.”
“This is a systemic problem with Mayoral agencies as a whole,” he said. “You’ve got sporadic ones that are doing the right thing, but it’s rare”
The union sent the trash bag images to DHS officials in a May 1 email. They were first published by The City, a nonprofit news organization.
“The people we serve at homeless services [have] very limited resources to protect themselves from any type of disease or viruses,” he wrote. “So any person in general that may assume that homeless people belongings are safe to handle without taking appropriate caution is downright ignorant, or a lack of common sense judgment, prejudice or just don’t give a damn.”
DHS officials rejected the claims from Local 924 in a statement and said they implemented new measures to help protect staff, including wiping down trucks after every trip, providing steam cleaners for the interiors of the vehicles and installing plexiglass partitions in the cabins.
“We have provided PPE masks to all front-line DHS and HRA staff, including maintenance and facilities staff, such as those at this location, along with other vital PPE, like hand-sanitizer and gloves,” said spokesman Isaac McGinn. “Guidance at this time does not recommend Tyvek suits or protective full-body coverings.”