Accidents Will Happen
Ex-employees say Ride the Ducks "really endangered people."
Jessica Kourkounis
A
WATERY GRAVE: Shortly after a sludge barge struck a stalled Ride the
Ducks boat on the Delaware River, Philadelphia police search for two
missing passengers, who were later discovered dead.
|
[ tragedies ]
On Sept. 8, 2009, Ride the Ducks mailed a UPS package to each of its 30-odd Baltimore employees, informing them that the company would cease operations in that city immediately.
"We lost a lot of money in Baltimore," says Bob Salmon, vice president of marketing and sales at Ride the Ducks, a Georgia-based company that operates amphibious tours in five cities. "We truly didn't know if we could ever be profitable there."
A subsequent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) investigation, however, casts doubt on this explanation: Ride the Ducks took in more than $500,000 in gross revenues in Baltimore the year before it closed. And the laid-off employees believe the company had an ulterior motive. In interviews, they claim Ride the Ducks shut down in Baltimore to block workers from joining the United Steelworkers Union (a vote was scheduled for Sept. 11, 2009).
The workers say they weren't organizing for better wages or benefits but, rather, for safer working conditions. "Their safety standards were abysmal, despite lip service to the contrary," says former Ride the Ducks Capt. Daylin Louderback.
Another captain, who asked to remain anonymous because he agreed in his severance package to not speak publicly about the company, says the safety conditions "really endangered people."
A mechanic who also asked to not be named was most blunt: "It was the most fucked-up place I've ever seen."
This labor tiff matters to Philadelphia: On July 7, a 250-foot, city-owned sludge barge in the Delaware River slammed into a stranded Ride the Ducks craft — Duck 34 — killing two passengers and injuring 10 others. According to police, the tour boat's engine had shut down following an on-board fire, the cause of which is yet-to-be-specified "mechanical trouble."
Though Ride the Ducks maintains that this was an unforeseeable accident — "You've been in a car that randomly broke down before, haven't you?" Salmon asks — former Baltimore employees say it might have been preventable. In their telling, the accident was a tragic consequence of the company long neglecting its vehicles and dismissing its workers' safety concerns.
"I don't think they wanted people to die," says Fred Speece, another former Ride the Ducks captain. "But the company set themselves up for this by putting money above safety. When you tried to talk safety, it was all, 'Shut up, get the hell to work or you're fired.'"
Ride the Ducks routinely swaps its managers, equipment and policies from city to city. So, while no Philly employees could be reached for this article — the company is shielding workers from the press — the Baltimore employees are able to shed light on what they describe as the company's modus operandi.
Salmon says that some of Baltimore's boats are now in Philly, though he doesn't know if they were in storage or being used before the July 7 accident grounded the fleet. If it's the latter, there's reason to be concerned: Louderback says the vehicles' mirrors were routinely broken, their lights often didn't work, and "when you said you needed 10 pieces of equipment, you'd only get one, weeks and weeks later."
Two captains, both of whom asked to remain anonymous, say one boat was in such poor shape that, for eight weeks, they started it by lifting its trap door and rigging the starter with a crowbar.
"It had a 40-gallon gasoline tank," a captain explains. "Sparks were jumping off it."
The aforementioned mechanic tells of a boat that took on water, but "instead of fixing the problem, they [wanted employees] to drain it every day." Speece says he could see daylight through one boat's sheet metal lining— meaning there was a hole in it — but was brushed off when he informed management.
These complaints go on and on, but two jump out: Nearly all of the half-dozen captains interviewed say their proper horns went unfixed for weeks at a time, and in lieu of addressing the problem, management gave them handheld air horns. (Duck 34's captain told investigators that when he tried to alert the approaching barge of danger via his air horn, the device didn't sound.) Louderback and other Baltimore captains also say that Ride the Ducks regularly made its crews work more than 12-hour days, without breaks. They suspect the company did the same in Philadelphia. "[The accident] was right after the July Fourth weekend. I'm sure they were running them ragged in Philly," says Louderback.
One captain gave his sworn affidavit, used in the NLRB's investigation in Baltimore, to City Paper. (He asked not to be named.) It supports Louderback's argument: "The company was assigning captains to around six tours a day, which could end up being a 13-and-a-half-hour day with no breaks. ... I remember that the company brought in a captain from Philadelphia around that time to talk to us about how to do six tours a day."
Ride the Ducks settled the NLRB complaint for $48,469, and remained closed in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, the Coast Guard and the Mayor's Office say they've not yet determined if Ride the Ducks will be allowed back into the city. (A National Transportation Safety Board investigation is pending.)
If not, it wouldn't be the first time Ride the Ducks was booted from the Delaware: Gregory Adams, the Coast Guard's local port captain, banned the company from operating off Penn's Landing from 1998 to 2002 because he deemed its presence in the channel too perilous. His successor reversed that decision in 2003.
In retrospect, Adams might've been onto something: From 2002 to 2010, the Coast Guard has logged 38 incident reports involving Ride the Ducks vehicles around the country; these reports are limited to "reportable maritime casualties," which include striking a bridge, losing propulsion, related deaths or injuries requiring professional medical treatment, and other issues. Of those 38, five involved Baltimore's Ride the Ducks. Philly's Ride the Ducks made an appearance in 22 reports — considerably more than in any other city. (In this same time period, the Spirit of Philadelphia, which operates dinner cruises, was involved in two incident reports. RiverLink Ferry, which runs between Penn's Landing and Camden in the summer, was in none.)
Ride the Ducks, meanwhile, says last year's events in Baltimore have no connection to the July 7 incident.
"I don't see the relevance of any of this to the tragic accident in Philadelphia," says Salmon, adding, "Safety has always been of paramount importance to us."
Also In This Week's News Section
A Million Stories
The Bell Curve
Furthermore, regarding the Baltimore union incident…if I had 30 employees as well as other operating expenses and only grossed $500,000 a year (as the article says about Ride the Ducks in Baltimore), I’d shut the business down too. Just do the math. And does anyone really think the United Steelworkers Union was organizing the Ride the Duck employees for safety reasons? Doesn’t Baltimore have a Coast Guard and OSHA office for that? Give me a break.
Duck #33 listed hard on one side because it was built with 2 different grades of steel - and the seal in the rear was an ineffective rubber gasket if not properly aligned before take off; so much so that Aug1 2009 there was a near-sinking that never was reported to the USCG. Any implication that the USW was fomenting an insurrection is ludicrous. They were solely contacted as a matter of last resort & protection - the captains & mechanics sought to form a local union of themselves in Baltimore, for safety reasons, and nothing more. After all, the job was among the better paying ones in the harbor. What reason did any of us have to put ourselves out of work, other than to head off what appeared inevitable? (and what subsequently occured in Philly, loss of life). For that matter, if RTD Baltimore, in place 2 years ahed of philadelphia, could not make money in 9 years of operations, why were we over the 90,000 proposed target the last 2 years of running? Why not end the business at the end of the season (with ticket reservations filled), instead of abruptly, without warning, 3 days before an expected union vote? Again, some might not see a connection. But, even without assigning accident responsibility to one capt or another, duck or barge (the Coast Guard navigational "rules of the road" will ensure some amount of blame for both parties), I would imagine some factual background might be judged as pertinent to the case. The general public man on the street may not care to dig a little deeper, but some Hungarian families are certain to expect additional information. Holly Otterbein did an excellent job of providing that to them.