Andrea Traficanti, the Lawrence Department of Public Works employee who has collected workers' compensation for nearly 20 months, needs to return to work — at whatever job the city has available for her.
Traficanti claims she cannot work at City Hall due to stress, a hostile work environment and harassment. She is, however, healthy enough to work elsewhere. Traficanti has applied for a public works position in Haverhill. Her lawyer claims Traficanti's efforts to work at other Lawrence city jobs have been frustrated by Mayor Michael Sullivan. Attorney Marsha Kazarosian is threatening a civil lawsuit.
So Traficanti continues to collect workers' compensation. She has been paid more than $60,000 for no work. And she can continue to collect workers' compensation for another 16 months — three years total. Then she can apply for long-term injury benefits.
The idea that a public employee can dictate to her supervisors, including the mayor, where she will work is ludicrous. Traficanti is either healthy enough to work or she is not. If she can work for Haverhill or at other public jobs in Lawrence, she is healthy enough to work. Her workers' compensation benefits should be terminated and she should be ordered to return to work at whatever job the city needs her to do.
Readers working in the private sector might try to imagine what would happen to them if they made such demands on their own employers. Who in the business world would get away with telling the company president that he or she must continue to collect workers' compensation unless given a new job of his or her choosing? Such an employee would be quickly shown the door — and rightly so.
The taxpayers who foot the bill for this nonsense grow tired of the demands made by public employees, who claim "rights" no one else in the working world enjoys. Whether it's Albert Arroyo, Boston's body-building disabled firefighter, John Brophy, Peabody's "dozing dispatcher," or now, stressed-out Andrea Traficanti, public employees get away with behavior that would cost most people their careers.
While they make their outlandish claims with straight faces, surely they're laughing behind their backs at what chumps we are for falling for them.
If Traficanti can work, she needs to get off the dole and do so. If she doesn't like her job, she's free to do what the rest of us do — quit and look for a new one.
