NAGE, OPEIU Rally Before Legal Hearing In Cambridge Courthouse Case
April 18, 2008
Workers at the Cambridge District Court joined NAGE National President David J. Holway and other allies outside the Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse on April 18, just before a status conference on the stalled plans to relocate workers from the unsafe building was to occur at the state Supreme Judicial Court.
President Holway, OPEIU Business Agent Maleia Allan, and Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys Paul Leavis were on hand as attorney Chris Milne prepared to attend the meeting at the SJC. The Trial Court first promised in 2004 to move workers from the Sullivan Courthouse, when the Commonwealth stated that poor conditions in the building constituted an emergency. Yet in 2008, the workers of the Cambridge District Court are still at risk from the building’s free-falling elevators, dangerous disrepair, and 90,000 pounds of friable asbestos (the kind that easily becomes airborne).
President Holway told the workers of his own history with the building—his own father worked there starting in the 1970s and died in 2006 after suffering asbestosis and other lung damage. “You and your families shouldn’t have to worry about your health just because you went to work,” he said. “You shouldn’t go through what my family and I went through.”
Chief Justice for Administration and Management Robert Mulligan has promised repeatedly to move employees, the last time by December 2007. The latest news this week was that Mulligan and his management team are ‘hopeful’ that a lease will be signed soon to move District Court employees to a Medford building by late 2008, nearly five years after their first promise to move workers to a safe environment.