The Non-Union Graveyard that is now a Charter School
The Dream Charter School on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx opened in 2022, after no fewer than three non-union workers were killed in separate construction site accidents.
This is the story of three non-union construction workers in New York City who died on the same construction site at 20 Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx. Their deaths occurred quietly in separate incidents from 2018 through 2021. Two of them were undocumented immigrants. The third was unhoused and dealing with substance abuse.
All of them worked for non-union contractors who were hired because they can offer the developer a lower labor cost by paying their crews well below the established standard wage. These workers, often in the city from poor Central and South American countries, take the low wages because it’s much more than they’d earn at home. But they often must endure worker abuse that comes with these non-union jobs. That abuse can be lethal – as 20 Bruckner would prove again and again.
20 Bruckner Boulevard is a large building in the south Bronx known for the iconic outdoor advertising space on its roof. Brands such as Knickerbocker Beer, Kent Cigarettes, The History Channel, iHeartRadio, and Uber have famously beamed gigantic ads towards the skyline of Manhattan. But the interior of the site was unused and run-down. The owner of the space, Jorge Madruga, who also owns Maddd Equities, and GDI Construction, acquired the agreement from a charter school company named Dream to lease the renovated building. So Mr. Madruga started hiring contractors for a remodel. He chose non-union.
Marco Martínez
At the young age of 18, Marco Martínez left his mountain home in Ecuador to find manual work in New York City where he believed he could earn enough money that he would be able to send an amount home to his family and make a difference in their lives.
Mr. Martínez was hired by Browne Tech Construction Corp, a non-union contractor helping with the Bruckner site clean up. It is law in New York City that all workers hired by contractors complete a job site safety course. The agency that supervises these certifications, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), has no record of Mr. Martinez taking the course.
One morning in early December, less than three weeks after he’d been hired, Mr. Martínez was told to clean a scissor lift – a hydraulically powered jack system that lifts and lowers a platform for workers to stand on. While standing on its platform Mr. Martínez activated the lift, perhaps accidentally. According to an OSHA investigation, he raised it eight feet, but he then peered over the top rail and the lift rose another 13 feet, crushing him against a ceiling beam.
Another worker on the scene, Yonin Pineda — who will be present at the third 20 Bruckner Boulevard fatality, recognized the injured laborer as the “boy” he had seen on the job for three weeks. “We saw that there was blood,” Mr. Pineda said.
Mr. Martínez died at Lincoln Medical Center. Browne Tech Construction Corp would not alert OSHA of the fatality for more than three weeks. Their fine was under $15,000, which the quickly and quietly paid.
None of these fatal accidents would have happened on a site run by New York City construction unions.
Michael Daves
Michael Daves, 58, had spent years in and out of prison and struggled with drugs. At the time that he was working at 20 Bruckner, he was living in a men’s shelter in the Bronx, where he was known by the other residents as Tru.
Mr. Daves, it turns out, had taken the required safety training. On a December morning in 2019 he was spraying a water hose to contain hazardous dust that flew from a 36-inch saw that a co-worker was using to cut through the second-floor concrete.
The foreman on the project told Mr. Daves to find a plank on the first floor that the concete cutter could use as a fence to guide a straighter cut. But instead of walking toward the stairs, Mr. Daves entered a gated area marked “Danger.” There were some planks in there, but there was also a large hole in the floor which Mr. Daves fell through. He hit the concrete floor 20 feet below. His foreman rushed downstairs to find him barely conscious and bleeding from the nose. Like Mr. Martinez, Mr. Daves died at Lincoln Medical Center.
The company he worked for, RLG Kingsland Services, did not notify OSHA of the accident for four days, a violation. In the OSHA report on the incident, the company asserted that Mr. Daves went into the small room where he was not allowed to be, to do drugs. OSHA determined that the hole in the floor was not properly sequestered and fined RLG Kingsland over $61,000, which they have not paid.
Mauricio Sánchez
On May 19, 2021, a third non-union worker would die at 20 Bruckner, another victim of negligence and abuse. Working as a foreman for GDI Construction, Mauricio Sánchez was able to send nearly $1,500 a month home to his widowed mother in Mexico. That morning he met colleague Yonin Pineda at the work site and they bought doughnuts and coffee.
Mr. Pineda explained that on that day he was instructed to start his shift on the fifth floor — the charter school’s future athletic center. The site managers wanted the floor cleaned of all debris.
Mr. Pineda and Mr. Sánchez took the smaller of two elevators. The larger one was being repaired that day. They collected the debris and prepared to make several trips down on the small elevator. But then two supervisors walked out of the larger elevator. Mr. Sánchez asked them if the elevator was working properly. They told him yes, but the elevator needed to be operated by hand.
Mr. Pineda and Mr. Sánchez loaded the large elevator with construction debris. When Mr. Sanchez started to move the elevator downward, an ominous noise sounded from above. Suddenly they were hurtling 75 feet to the ground.
Mr. Pineda said, “I’m looking at Mauricio, and Mauricio is looking at me. We screamed.” He explained that the overwhelming sense of helplessness, of imminent death, was brief. “Once I went down, I don’t remember what happened,” he said.
After the crash to the ground floor, workers found Mr. Sánchez face down, bits of broken concrete in his black hair. He was pronounced dead on the scene. Next to him lay Mr. Pineda who sustained numerous fractures from blunt force impact. He spent weeks in the hospital.
Three Dead, Time to Party
Less than three weeks after the third fatal incident at the job site, a leader of the developer running the project, Drew Katz, held a 50th birthday party for himself on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. His business partner, Mr. Madruga, was there, as were dozens of guests who enjoyed a days-long celebration that included golf, zip-lining, A.T.V. rides and baseball hats emblazoned with “DK50” to commemorate the host’s 50th birthday.
The renovation was completed in 2022. Gone are the large ads on the roof. The Dream Charter school moved in. On its website the school features its high graduation rate and the number of seniors who successfully enter college. Perhaps some might see this as reward for the lives sacrificed in the renovation of that school building. But the fact is that none of those accidents should have happened – none of them would have happened on a site run by New York City construction unions.
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