BY Celeste Katz
DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
Sunday, February 14th 2010, 4:00 AM
It's a union protest so creepy that residents are having trouble resting in peace.
Workers rallying against the use of a non-union firm for asbestos abatement put a shiny brown coffin outside of 176 Broadway. It's been sitting there every day since Feb. 2.
"I called the police," said Milda De Voe, 41, a mother of two who has lived in the lower Manhattan building since 2001. "My 7-year-old son wants to know why they think we're going to die."
Maintenance worker Eric Soto says the coffin is so disturbing, he'd much rather have the union bring out the "giant rat" balloon often used at protests.
David Vila of Asbestos, Lead & Hazardous Waste Laborers' Local 78 said the coffin should remind onlookers of the workers' need to feed their families.
The union has three caskets that it has used in protests in New York, New Jersey and Long Island over the last few years, said Eli Kent, Local 78's director of organization.
Kent said the casket makes an important statement: that non-union workers often lack the benefits and protections that organized labor gets. It's also about safety.
"The point of this is to draw attention to the fact that asbestos kills," Kent said. "If some people get uncomfortable, [but] we can save people's lives, we think that's worth it."
Andrew Gasparro of the Landmark Consultants Corp., the Brooklyn firm doing the asbestos abatement, said the union criticisms are weak.
"It's extremely misleading," Gasparro said. "We're providing good service [and] good employment. We are working [with the Department of Environmental Protection], and to have [a] coffin outside is very distasteful."
ckatz@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/02/14/2010-02-14_casket_gives_new_life_to_labor_gripe.html?print=1&page=all#ixzz0hJvP2iwh
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