Two Boston Sheet Metal Workers Risk Lives to Save Rail Passenger (video)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/08/18/two-boston-sheet-metal-workers-risk-lives-to-save-rail-passenger/

by Mike Hall, Aug 18, 2008

The third rail in Boston’s subway system carries 600 deadly volts of electricity. But that danger didn’t stop A.J. Pugliese Jr. and Robert Johnson, members of Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) Local 17, from springing into action to save a man who had fallen from the platform to the tracks, landing inches from the 600-volt rail (see video).

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=9300458

The man, in his 50s, had been unsteady on his feet and then tumbled from the platform to the tracks five feet below. The union members and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) employees were in the North Station working on map displays when they heard the shouts for help from commuters.

Pugliese told The Boston Globe:

I said we have to get this guy. Yeah, I was little scared…but your adrenaline is going. He was just passed out like, laying there in the middle of the tracks.

When they got to the man, they carefully moved his arm from near the charged third rail and put it on his chest and then lifted him to the platform. The man was taken to a hospital, treated and released.

Says MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo:

It’s extraordinary that they would put themselves in harm’s way to help this man.

But as PaulVA points out on a post at Daily Kos, it only seems extraordinary because we don’t hear about

…the extraordinary stories like this that happen every day. Of course, with Labor Day coming up, we risk hearing less about the extraordinary stories of ordinary citizens like Pugliese and Johnson, and more about the blitz of television ads attacking the men and women of the labor movement.


PaulVA cites the recent media blitz by front groups for Big Business against working family candidates and unions and notes that while Pugliese and Johnson “were rescuing their fellow Americans, sleazy opportunists like Tom DeLay were busy sending out fundraising letters blaming unions for terrorist attacks.”

One thing Tom DeLay and his right-wing cronies don’t have to worry about is whether or not a union firefighter or even construction worker would help them if they ever got into a jam. It’s that kind of selflessness that we need to honor on Labor Day, not the right wing smears that will be thrown at the labor movement.

[Captain Hilts]

1. These guys deserve to go to the White House more than college athletic teams. nt

[Bob Dobbs]

2. The People, United

Will never be defeated.

Thank Heaven for these brave men who exemplify the true nature of organized laborers, the belief that we ARE responsible for each other, and only by working for the good of all can we achieve an end to poverty.