I don't have any way of knowing whether Okoi Tucker, an eight-year employee of the New London Department of Public Works who was fired last week by Mayor Daryl Finizio, was a good worker.

But I do know that Tucker, who is black, has a pending discrimination complaint against the city with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, one of several brought recently by minority members of that department who claim they have been treated unfairly.

Tucker is also a certified whistleblower, protected by state statute from job retaliation, because late last year he reported to the occupational safety division of the state Department of Labor, CONN-OSHA, a serious safety violation at the city's waste transfer station.

It turns out someone in the control room for the station's trash compactor was using masking tape to hold down a new safety on-button that was installed to be sure someone was manually monitoring and running the machine.

The safety button was installed after a city resident was killed in the compactor, which had routinely been left running and unattended.

The city eventually fired another transfer station worker after Tucker's complaint to CONN-OSHA about the taping down of the safety button. But they also retaliated against him, he said in a subsequent whistleblower complaint filed with the state, by denying him overtime and demoting him.

He was also made to scrub the tape residue off the control panel, he said in his retaliation complaint. He said in the complaint he was made by his supervisor to feel ashamed for reporting the taping, as if it had been the wrong thing to do. He also reported managers complained to a co-worker that he should not have notified the state, which already had fined the city after the compactor death.

And then, last Friday, by order of the mayor, he was fired.

The Finizio administration didn't say much publicly about the Tucker firing except that a safety gate had been left open at the transfer station, in violation of a new no-tolerance safety violation policy at the station.

Presumably, Tucker's firing may eventually be adjudicated within the state Department of Labor, which may hold an arbitration session and hearing on a whistleblower retaliation complaint. The state could order a reinstatement, lawyers' fees and damages. It could also end up in Superior Court.

It sure seems like Tucker, who presumably reported the taping to the state because it was being done openly in front of managers — the roll of tape was left right on the control panel —  has a good case.

The head of the municipal union, who is in charge of the transfer station, was not fired in last week's housekeeping by the mayor. Nothing, it seems, protects you from the mayor like union status.

I was able to reach Tucker this week, but he said he couldn't talk about the firing. He sounded nervous. He said he has four kids to feed.

I don't know much about Tucker's work history, except that he stayed with the city as an employee in good standing, until he took a legitimate complaint about safety to the state, as he is legally entitled to do — indeed, encouraged and legally protected to do — and was fired months later.

It is also worrisome that the mayor hasn't acknowledged or addressed the troubling number of discrimination complaints from minority employees in the department.

This is the same mayor who, barely installed in office, fired the first black firefighter the city had hired in decades. He has talked since about the problem of the overall racial imbalance in the department but no new minority hires have been made.

With the firing of a black whistleblower, I see more lost money accruing on the mayor's woeful legal costs balance sheet, ballooning because of so many botched personnel decisions.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct