By Doug Cunningham

Disabled New York City Ironworker and 9/11 first responder John Sferazo was honored recently with a Troublemakers Award from the Detroit Labor Magazine Labor Notes. Sferazo says he speaks for the underdog and has been on a crusade to get adequate healthcare benefits for 9/11 workers exposed to toxins.

[Sferazo]: “As we meet here tonight, there’s still twenty-something percent of the workers compensation cases being controverted, denied and delayed for almost seven years.”

Sferazo is pushing for legislation that would shift the economic burden of healthcare for workers responding to disasters from workers themselves onto the federal government instead.