You recently updated your account of last month’s Great Neck Board of Trustees meeting to include a false accusation from “an AvalonBay spokesperson” that 32BJ SEIU had “distorted” AvalonBay’s safety record and that our representative’s statement at the meeting was ”replete with errors.”
It is a fact, and neither an error nor a distortion, that OSHA fined AvalonBay after an April 2012 fire in Garden City, finding that AvalonBay did not maintain an effective fire protection and prevention program, and that the welder whose torch started the blaze was working alone in violation of federal regulations.
The U.S. Department of Labor records are available to anyone who cares to examine them.
That’s just one of the many safety violations AvalonBay has committed over the last several years:
· A Bergen County jury ruled in February 2005 that AvalonBay’s negligence contributed to an August 2000 fire at an AvalonBay construction site that destroyed or damaged dozens of nearby homes.
· OSHA fined AvalonBay in April 2003 for lax fire protection at a construction project in Newton, Mass.
· The New York City Department of Buildings penalized AvalonBay four times between December 2008 and July 2009 for violating the city’s fire code with smoking refuse at a Brooklyn construction site.
·California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health warned AvalonBay in March 2009 about its failure to “promptly remove combustible debris” at a construction site in Dublin, Calif.
· An OSHA inspection of an AvalonBay site in March 2010 found just one fire extinguisher for an entire 220,000 square foot, four-story building.
·The Massachusetts state fire department in July of 2011 found that faulty construction contributed to a fire that destroyed an AvalonBay-built apartment building in Quincy,Mass.
· A woman living in an AvalonBay complex in Danvers, Mass., was sent to the hospital during a potentially fatal carbon monoxide leak in the building; AvalonBay maintenance staff had removed carbon monoxide detectors after they sounded.
· OSHA fined AvalonBay for fire protection lapses in November 2012 at a construction project in Boston where oxygen/acetylene bottles were stored next to flammable gas containers with no fire protection within a safe distance.
All of these records are available for public inspection and we would be happy to share them with AvalonBay’s spokesperson. Thank you for the opportunity to correct the record.
Shirley Aldebol
Vice President, 32BJ SEIU
