Posted on 01/30/2015 5:43:32 PM PST by Altura Ct.
A T-shirt could cost this firefighter his job.
A judge has recommended the FDNY sack Brooklyn firefighter Thomas Buttaro for wearing anti-affirmative-action T-shirts to work, creating what she called a hostile work environment.
“The FDNY is a para-military organization and may restrict a uniformed member’s appearance so long as the restrictions are rationally related to the department’s legitimate interests,” Administrative Law Judge Alessandra Zorgniotti decided.
Modal TriggerA veteran smoke eater is in hot water over his choice to wear a T-shirt promoting the Merit Matters group that opposes changes to the department's entrance exam.
...Buttaro, of Ladder Co. 123 in Crown Heights, would wear T-shirts on duty bearing the logo and slogans of Merit Matters, a group opposed to altering the FDNY’s admissions test to accommodate minority recruits.
Speaking through his lawyer, Buttaro said he planned to challenge the judge’s findings, which are not binding on the FDNY.
“We’re going to fight this for as long as it takes to get vindicated,” said lawyer Adam Weiss. “There are only two sides to the story, and it looks like [the judge] took the prosecution’s side of the story and ignored ours.”
The Post first reported in September that Buttaro, who is white, was facing disciplinary charges for wearing a Merit Matters shirt to work.
The shirts became an issue after Buttaro got into a heated exchange on May 6, 2012, with a black colleague over a suit filed by the Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black firefighters that has called the FDNY’s hiring practices discriminatory.
Weiss, Buttaro’s lawyer, said he expects Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro to make a decision on his client’s fate in the next month.
“Obviously, we disagree with the ALJ’s decision,” he said. “It’s a very skewed version of what happened.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Wha, they’re gonny axe him not to wear it?
Fascists never think they’re fascists.
Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee.
FDNY is a “para-military organization”? WHAT? This idiot judge belongs in a padded cell
Obviously, this country has opted to punish merit and reward indolence.
Merit has no place in America. He is guilty of being white and favoring a meritocracy. Off with his head.
What?
We are doing nobody any favors with affirmative action; it deceives the “preferred minorities” as to their true value in the real world. At my job it has been very liberating, letting men like me stop working the unpaid overtime that was expected of many office “professionals”; women with fabricated titles, unclear responsibilities, and no performance metrics were leaving on time, so now we all do - what’s good for the token goose is good for the working gander.
I suspect a lot of the feelings of inferiority among “preferred minorities” arises from the fact that outside of their affirmative action cocoon, they hear people using big words they don’t understand and know they aren’t the real equals of their male white & Asian peers.
Not to mention that the Fire Commissioner is a Nigro!
This is particularly an issue in areas abandoned for the most part by whites but with significant numbers of white public employees; the non-whites want their piece of the pie, and merit isn’t even part of the discussion.
It’s all fun and games until the non-whites are expected to pay their own public employees (of all colors); they want the jobs, but not the bill. If you could see the Newark NJ cops laid off a few years ago (160+), there may have been 10 that were in good physical shape; there were obviously obese minority women, but because it was last in/first out, the affirmative action tokens were sent packing. I assume the few guys in good shape were recently-hired military veterans. Newark NJ wants to be a chocolate (and caramel) city, but the chocolate and caramel residents can’t pay for police protection - so they no longer get it.
Merit doesn’t matter?
I imagine she meant to say “semi-military”, as fire and police departments are often described, functioning with a rank structure and operational rules similar to our military...
Or maybe she doesn’t know or understand the difference?
After all, what difference does it make?
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