Embedded on the Front Line of City's War on Slush - at $10 an Hour

By BRADLEY HOPE, Special to the Sun
February 16, 2006

Three full days after the historic snowfall that piled snow by the foot on the city's streets and sidewalks, I picked up a shovel soon after the sun rose yesterday and joined a 12-person squad of the city's $10 an hour emergency snow laborers. A total of 512 laborers reported for duty at sanitation garages across the boroughs. We carried ID cards bearing our name, photo, Social Security number, and sanitation code. For a few hours, I was ME03-057.

The squad was made up of snow shovelers, ice choppers, and slush broomers - and after a half-day's work, all had learned that there are many more species of frozen precipitation than "snow." Among others, there is powder, granulated ice, flaky snow, icy dirt, slush like a snow cone (but with dirt), slush like a glass of melting ice, wet snow, dry snow, ice that sticks, ice that slips. There is snow that fell, snow that drifted - and snow that started to melt and then froze again, before becoming covered in powder.

The work isn't steady or easy, but it beats minimum wage by $3.25. Several laborers confided to me that they didn't think it was much of a sacrifice to give up comfort and the integrity of their lower back for that wage. "That's a lot of money," one told me.

It's a kind of seasonal labor, tied to the fickleness of the weather and the degree to which New Yorkers are ticked off at trudging through ankle-deep ice water. When the worst comes down, New York's snow laborers breathe a sigh of relief: There's at least one more day of work and probably more.

The job is fairly simple: Clear out the areas near fire hydrants, bus stops, drains, and intersections; throw the snow into the street and let it melt. A supervisor from the Sanitation Enforcement unit of the department hovers in the background, occasionally grabbing a shovel to help out, and keeping the van in proximity to the crew - mine included small-time cigarette hustlers, maintenance workers, and elevator repairmen.

Before we headed out, we met at a giant sanitation garage full of trucks. Light filtered through pale yellow windowpanes. Ray, who lives in the nearby housing projects, was the first one there. A jack of all trades, he works as a busboy, dishwasher, factory worker, and part-time laborer, among other jobs. "I do whatever's available," he said, showing a cracked tooth.

To get on the list for the much coveted snow jobs, you have to be in line as early as 7:30 a.m. (7 a.m. on busy days). A grumpy sanitation administrator named Willie takes down names and doles out the jobs. In theory, if a laborer puts in 40 hours, he gets a raise to $15 an hour. This is nearly impossible, though, because Willie gives out jobs to newcomers first and veterans second. Several old-time snow laborers said this wasn't the case last year. At eight hours of wages, the city spent about $41,000 on the 512 extra workers yesterday. The storm could end up costing the city more than $100,000 in emergency snow labor.

After Willie's list was final and a couple of late arrivers were turned away, we were paid to wait. For 75 minutes, we sat in the vast, cold garage. Dump trucks came and went. Dollars were added to our checks.

A lean shoveler named Giovanni who looks like he rides a bicycle read the Men's Health guide to "How to Win at Everything." In between pages, he related to a woman with a piercing in her chin his philosophy on health and medicine.

"You can't mix cigarettes and vitamins," he said. "They cancel each other out." A smoker, she nodded but didn't seem interested.

Audrey, an older woman who also lives in the nearby housing projects, laughed and joked with the other three women there. A Tai-Chi interest magazine found lying in the garage was passed around.

Without circumstance, more than an hour after we went "on the clock," our supervisors arrived and we were broken into two squads of 12. We grabbed shovels, ice choppers, and thick brooms, and wielded them like weapons. Our target was a three-avenue by six-street block of the Lower East Side. After being transported by van, we began shoveling immediately.

At first, the work was easy and almost fun. There was a pleasure in the immediacy of the progress. It's all right in front of you: a cleared path, an unburied hydrant, or slush going down the drain. But it quickly becomes clear that this is a thankless job. Several times young women with large sunglasses rudely interjected "Excuse me" as we shoveled and scraped - as if we were being selfish by taking up part of the sidewalk. A few passers-by smiled, but it seemed like it was mostly out of awkwardness in having encountered our ragtag clean-up crew.

At every corner my squad members razzed each other and the attractive women that walked by. When you carry a shovel and are working for the city, you can't help but have a bit of a swagger. Despite this and our frequent breaks, we got a lot done in a matter of hours. At one point, we were all standing in the sun, listening to hip-hop music from a shower radio worn like a necklace by the woman with the chin piercing. Our feet were soggy and caked with slush, and our backs ached, but we were content. Lunch was just around the corner.

Our mood was dampened a bit by our only tragedy of the day. Audrey, the raucous matron of the group, lost her bag. In it was the deed to her house, her keys, birth certificate, Social Security card, and wallet. She left it behind at one intersection after standing on top of a large mound of snow - the icy kind. The part-time cigarette hustler, Jose, said, "Sometimes when you pretend like you are king of the mountain, you come tumbling down." We nodded in agreement. In the art of snow removal, there is more than meets the passing glance.