It was not fun and games for several current and former Chicago City workers today. They met with prestigious Park Ridge Attorney and columnist Russ Stewart to forward their complaints in front of Federal Judge Joan B. Gottschall at the Dirksen Federal Building. Please note from left to right, Terry Doherty (former laborer Chicago Department of Water Management) Thomas McDarrah (Bricklayer foreman) Charles Walker (former Building Department Inspector) Steve Collier (former DWM engineer) Attorney Russ Stewart John Sweitczak (Plumbing Inspector), Bruce Randazzo (DWM teamster) Victor Crown (legal research). These men suffered adversities during their employment at the City of Chicago, despite the laws to protect them. The men will fight for all Chicago City Workers. Many more current employees are subject to their day in court, please contact me so I can schedule your petitions and get you in front of a Federal Judge. This complex legal strategy was perfected and implemented thanks to the efforts of the Municipal Advocate General Directors Patrick McDonough, Michael McGann, John Sweitczak, and legal researcher Victor Crown. Meetings with attorneys Mr. Russ Stewart and Frank Avila Jr., Ivan Tomic, and Rachel Goodstein explored several legal angles. I was surprised at all the money the City of Chicago is spending on private law firms to defend these cases. I think Chicago City lawyers should defend the taxpayers. I wish all these people good luck and I am proud of all of them exercising their legal rights. Photo by Patrick McDonough.
21 Replies to “Attorney Russ Stewart at Dirksen Federal Building Today Protects Chicago City Workers”
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Pat,
There are those of us who have suffered the wrath of Mayor Daley’s political cronies, armies etc.
There is the City code among City employees to accept being emotional sodomized than to speak out.
When one speaks out or exercise one of our most precious rights in America (U.S. Constitution/Freedom of speech)the above cowards label these courageous individuals as Rats.
It is unfortunate that most City employees fear exercising the above rights while our brother and sister in uniform are sent to shed their blood in an unpopular war to protect these same privileges.
God Bless the U.S. Constitutions and all of our Brother and Sisters sacrifices for protecting these sacred privileges .
LET FREEDOM RING!!!
Good work Pat!!!
Russ Stewart, Frank Avila, Ivan Tomic, are all great attorneys.
Bruce Randazzo is a true whistleblower.
Victor Crown does some innovative stuff.
The city is so corrupt it is sick. Disgusting. Awful.
Daley should be ashamed of himself.
(Response) If you wish to post your accusations give your name. You are a coward.
I had a shit lawyer that does not understand the law Like you guys. Damn city hired a bunch of law firms and tried submarining my case. It is bullshit the way city workers are treated. The law firms made up lies. I hope you guys kick ass.
Thank you Rich,
Yes I am a whistleblower,
I look at the road in front of me and think to myself, this road is unsafe to travel on, But I will smooth the road out and make it safe for others to follow my lead, I already set precedent in my federal case while in Streets and San. They do not do the things they done there to ANYBODY again. But I got to give thanks to some one here. Mr. Strnad he’s one of the best! Now that I am In the Watermanagement, wow things over here are screwed up so much, 99% of these drivers are whips, PAT Holy crap never seen a bunch of whimps like these drivers over here (in my opinion)But you know what? its ok. Some one has to show these bunch of people how to get things done. I am here to fight the fight, I will not be scared off, they come by my home and shoot their guns at me, (they need to go to the range and get more practice) they are bad shots. They shoot good at windows on my car and they were point blank so of course. I am riding the horse to the finish line, 6 more weeks? !!!!! you need help in filing lawsuits, do not be scared, you are protected under the 1st amendment right. They can not “mess with you” there are severe punishments if they do. Ask any attorney what the punishments are for “Messing with federal witness’s and Plantiff’s”
Oh please do mess with us !!!!
Pat,
(Response) talking crap and not giving your real name will not be tolerated. You are just a chicken hiding in the bushes. Go tell that person that to his face, or are you just a typical city worker?
Please correct me if I am wrong but did not some of these former employes had their discharge cases heard at the Personnel/HR Board? If so and the board up held the firing, there was just cause. If so, how are you going to get around that.? It makes anythng else very hard to prove. Oh and to be a whistleblower the employer has not know you were blowing the whistle before your discharge?
(Response) I am not going to try the case here. Contact a lawyer if you are confused with the law, or wait until you get fired and watch your Union sell you down the river. Good Luck.
Just like you Pat you get ask a question that goes to the heart of your ranting in your post and you wont adress it. No one is askingyou to try thecase but the last poster just asked a simple question.
Jouralist ask question but also have to answeer them.
(response) Really? Where did you get that?
pa
“If so and the board up held the firing, there was just cause.”
You really are confused.
Or pretending to be.
Justice and this city’s hr board are no more compatible than oil and water.
I suspect that you know this already.
Hey Pat, what were the reasons for the firings so some of these fellows? How about a litle info to go with the story!
(Response) Here is a little, POLITICS!
Pat,
Journalist report news, not make the news. That is Journalism 101. I also sent a link of your blog to a professor of law at the University of (well you have to figure out which one) who I known from years ago. The professor has handled case dealing with press issues said and I quote, that Blog meets most basic legal principals and is considered a Journalist entity. In other words if you were ordered by a court to reveal your sources and refused, you would not be in jail till you did reveal them.
(Response) Thank you I think?
This is not news, it is gossip. News is informative and unbiased. This blog is controlled by a scorn city employee who picks and chooses to post what he sees as a validation to his point. In this thread alone he omitted 2 posts from Remember your Roots and only gave a response. Let us see what you omitted. His response to the North District shows that even Pat knows that some of these guys come from a tainted background.
He is as much of a journalist as Sean Hannity from fox news. Their bias shines through on all angels of their commentary.
When you can’t answer simple questions about the character of yourself and the guys in this picture, you sound like the scorn person that you are. Grow some balls and let people free post on your blog. Take your finger off the censor button.
(Response) sounds like a great idea!
First Pat you would not be in jail because you spill your beans all talk no action
Noth District.. why is any employee fired because they violated work rules and after you violate the rules enough times you are fired.
To confused:
What you are trying to get at that Pat does not want to address goes something like this as this law professor I talk to though this is not her area of expertise.
If an employer has a legitimate non discriminatory reason to fire some on then there is no case. If that reason was tried in a forum before a third party and the reason was found to be legitimate, it makes it very hard to prove that that person was discriminated against based on any unlawful reason such as based on Race, Sex politics etc.
So since Pat does not want you to know the basic truth, others will have to provide the answers.
Garbage crews ‘paid to do nothing’ city surveillance finds
October 8, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
Chicago’s household garbage is being picked up by crews that work less than six hours a day — and get “paid to do nothing” for 25 percent of their time on the clock — costing taxpayers at least $14.3 million a year, the city’s inspector general has found.
During a 10-week, citywide surveillance that ended last month, Inspector General David Hoffman found that waste and falsification of time in the Bureau of Sanitation is “systemic and pervasive and extends to all wards,” aided by poor supervision by layer upon layer of middle-management.
Laborers and truck drivers whose movements were eyeballed by undercover investigators and tracked by GPS were found to be in bars and restaurants, relaxing at home, sitting in their cars or standing around drinking and, in some cases, urinating on the street when they were supposed to be hard at work.
When the cost of employee benefits and the pricetag for maintaining and fueling trucks is factored in, the annual waste citywide approaches $21 million, the inspector general found.
The malingering is so pervasive, the city could literally pick up the same amount of garbage with 25 percent fewer employees, provided the survivors worked a full 8.5-hour shift with 30 minutes off for lunch.
That won’t be easy. The Department of Streets and Sanitation needs a top-to-bottom shake-up, Hoffman said.
“Garbage truck crews wasting and falsifying time is a systemic, pervasive problem that extends to wards in all parts of the city. Addressing this problem will require systemic solutions,” Hoffman wrote in a report distributed to aldermen and obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Of the 145 laborers whose daily movements were tracked in 10 different wards, investigators “did not see a single laborer doing a full day’s work,” according to the report. The worst ward had crews slacking off for an average of two hours and 28 minutes a day. In the best-performing ward, laborers were paid to do nothing for one hour and 38 minutes.
Hoffman identified “extremely poor supervision” as the “principal cause” for the waste and fraud that Chicago taxpayers can ill afford.
“Any supervisor even mildly interested in ensuring that truck crews in his ward were working full-time would have noticed that employees were often absent for long periods of time while swiped in or were hanging around the ward yards or truck checkpoints without working — sometimes sleeping in their cars, sometimes loitering, sometimes taking long, leisurely lunches,” he wrote.
“By failing to properly supervise garbage truck crews, these supervisors enabled extensive waste and falsification of time.”
The findings come at a pivotal time. Hundreds of laborers are targeted for layoffs to help erase a projected $420 million shortfall this year and next.
“Sounds a little bit like a witchunt to me. They’re laying off 1,080 people.
Over 300 are members of Local 1001. Read between the lines,” said Lou Phillips, business manager for Laborers Union Local 1001.
Phillips agreed that “supervision is bad.” But he strongly disagreed with Hoffman’s portrait of systemic abuse.
“It could be a downed truck. It could be between loads. There’s a number of different situations” that could cause down time, he said.
“I want a good workforce out there just like everybody else does. But you’re going to make 300 people suffer for a problem with a couple of them? Do we get rid of [all] poilticians because one goes to jail? It’s not everybody. I could guarantee you that.”
The Laborers Union has argued that the mayor’s plan to shrink city crews — to one laborer on a garbage truck instead of two — would make it difficult, if not impossible to pick up the same volume of garbage.
Hoffman’s findings suggest otherwise if supervisers crack the whip. But his report was quick to point out that malingering was just as prevalent in crews with one laborer on a truck as it was with two-laborer crews.
Think of all of the time Pt is loafin taking photos of himself doing his job instead of him doing his job. If he stop taking photos and do his job full time, we make dent in the $420 million deficit. In fact if he spent more time resting in his off hours instead of harassing managers who make him work an in turn was more productive at work because he was more rested, he could wipe out the whole $420 Million.
(Response) Can you do any better than this?
Think of all the time a single idiot posts pro daley drivel, under several monickers, amongst them being ‘jack byrnes’, ‘obsessed with daley’, & ‘remember your roots’, all with one single motive, promoting the daley crime family’s agendas.
And this cretin now wants to be free to post as often as the idiot ‘oreo’, aka ‘orion’ does on the Reader’s Clout City blog?
What makes this freak think he’s got any fans on any blog?
(Response) It reveals the way some people think. I have sent many messages and some people just hate the messenger, no matter what. I just hope this person listens to the message. Thanks.
Obsessed with Daley i am not, but obsessed with city workers who participated in a system to get their jobs and now that the system does not work for them (then fuck the system), I AM. I only mentioned a free posting because you would have to register you name in order to do so. I use my real name and dont hide behind the computer screen. A whining little pussy like yourself would be a little less motivated to post something that is not true if their name was attached to it. Grow some balls and put your real name on the post so your co-workers know where you stand. Sorry you got left behind at your job, BUT MAYBE YOU SUCK AT WHAT YOU DO.
Jack Byrnes:
If the City wanted transparency, they would stop asking for gag orders on all of the employment cases that have been filed by workers.
How many confidential agreements have been reached with racial minorities, women, and others who brought private employment cases? I’d love to know the cost of the settlements. Chicagoans are already aware that it cost 12M to settle the Shakman violations.
By the way Jack, no one is impressed with your vulgarity and filthy language. Please get your mind out of the gutter, bathroom, and your trousers.
As a woman, citizen, I can speak freely about major subjects effecting City employment. However, when delving into workplace specifics, some protocols, discretion and confidentiality are expected.
For example, I can state as a woman that EEOC laws, including those effecting Sexual Harassment should be followed.
As a City worker, I’m constrained by Personnel Rules regarding confidentiality. I can’t publicly identify someone who may have Sexually Harassed me due to stated Personnel requirements.
It isn’t a matter of lacking moral fortitude, it is having the innate intellegence to know what is legal, plausible, and defendable to publicly disseminate.
My supervision, union representatives, and co-workers are well aware of where I stand. That is why they continue to engage in retaliatory behavior.
Uh, jackie boy, sucking is what you do, so how can you suck at sucking?