Marshal Greenberg is an odd, unlikely whistle-blower.The son of an accused organized crime associate, he earned more than $100,000 a year operating the elevator that ferried workers and supplies up and down the exterior of the former Deutsche Bank building during its troubled demolition.
He was hefty and heavily tattooed, a middle-aged man with a cushy job, a powerful father and a host of compelling reasons to keep his head down and his mouth shut.
Instead Mr. Greenberg embraced his job with a Barney Fife kind of zeal. He photographed unsafe conditions at the Manhattan building. He reported dangerous practices to supervisors and safety inspectors.
Smoking near compressors. Shot glasses left behind at a work station. Drug use. Stealing.
“Everybody has a right to work in a safe environment,” Mr. Greenberg said. “I was careful. That’s my job.”
For his efforts, Mr. Greenberg says, union co-workers and construction supervisors threatened and abused him, ridiculed his size, his skin condition and his chatty way with government regulators.
And after a fire at the building in 2007 killed two firefighters, someone even fingered him as an arsonist. For days, investigators treated him like the prime suspect.
Actually, the blaze was caused by careless smoking, like the kind Mr. Greenberg had reported, investigators concluded, and the firefighters’ deaths were blamed on unsafe conditions, like a standpipe that was dismantled. Two construction supervisors have been accused of criminal negligence in the deaths.
But Mr. Greenberg says he does not feel vindicated, only shunned.
Long a member of the Operating Engineers Local 14, who is credited with saving a woman on the day of the fire, Mr. Greenberg says he is now an outcast: unwelcome at his old job, unable to find work at any other.
“I’m treated like public enemy No. 1, all because I did the right thing,” Mr. Greenberg, 39, said.
He is suing the contractors who employed him, Bovis Lend Lease and the John Galt Corporation, accusing them of retaliating against him for telling the truth. Bovis, in court papers, has denied his claims. Galt has yet to file its court papers, and declined comment. ...
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