Recent criticism of NY Waterway SIU crew members by a different union is grossly inaccurate and reflects a regrettable lack of gratitude.
SIU-crewed NY Waterway ferries have a decades-long record of safe operations as well as more than 100 rescues, large and small. Those rescues include the evacuation of more than 160,000 people from Manhattan after the attacks of 9/11, securing 143 airline passengers in 2009 after an emergency water landing in what became known as the Miracle on the Hudson – and last month’s aid of passengers from the Staten Island Ferry vessel that caught fire.
We are proud of our members employed at NY Waterway and of our organization-wide safety record. We are equally proud of our affiliated, world-class maritime training school (offering the most U.S. Coast Guard-approved courses of any such school in the nation), which has produced qualified mariners for all segments of the industry since 1967.
For an official from another union to question the training and qualifications of NY Waterway crews – presumably in order to gain leverage in a labor dispute – is inappropriate and incorrect.
SIU crews employed by NY Waterway have provided safe, efficient, reliable commuter and excursion services to local riders in New York and New Jersey since 1986.
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