Now that the Big Dig — Boston’s ambitious, interminable plan to bury its freeways — is finally winding down, thousands of workers who have devoted years to the largest earthworks project in human history are receiving pinkslips.
For now, though, instead of finding jobs elsewhere in Boston, many former Big Dig employees are eyeing potential, long-term work out of state, such as the proposed Second Avenue subway in New York City, an ambitious light-rail project in Washington state, and an ongoing sewage-overflow project in Providence…
”A lot of craftsmen that have worked here have never been laid off and have worked a ton of overtime,” said John Pourbaix, executive director of Construction Industries of Massachusetts, a trade association.
”The scary part to me,” he said, ”is these employees pretty much became accustomed to a lifestyle and paycheck that might be going south.”