As union bosses continued livin’ it up in the Puerto Rican sun yesterday, municipal workers getting soaked by New York’s cold rain were livid that their hard-earned money was funding the leaders’ Caribbean “convention.”
“There goes our union dues!” fumed a furious Local 3 electrician. “They paid for that junket with union dues.”
“I’ve worked for 10 months in the last two years. I’m getting laid off at the end of the year,” the electrician railed. “I have no use for the union. All I see is waste, corruption and hypocrisy.”
At an Upper West Side firehouse, a member of New York’s Bravest, who was working in the rain, said in amazement, “We’re all based here in New York anyway, so why would they spend all that money on going someplace else? They could have just had it here.”
The New York State Public Employees Conference was wrapping up its annual six-day fiesta at the Caribe Hotel in San Juan — where union bosses were poolside sucking down one last $9 beer and soaking up a few more rays.
“We’re not making any comments,” snapped two labor bosses lounging by the Caribe pool, one shirtless, the other wearing an FDNY shirt.
“Get lost!” a police supervisors-union bigwig snarled to a Post reporter.
Less nasty was a tanned Steve Melish, a bigwig in the union that represents municipal painters, who said the convention was “absolutely serious business” for the 300 or so bosses who flew from New York to attend..
“If it was all sun and fun, I wouldn’t be here,” Melish insisted. “There is a lot of business that goes on down here.”
When his tan was noted by a reporter, Melish quipped, “You’re in Puerto Rico. You can’t be in your room all day.”
Additional reporting by Helen Freund and Dan Mangan