By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

THE DEPT. OF EDUCATION'S layoff of 642 school workers on Oct. 7 was a terrible injustice, and we won't back down from our fight to bring them back. The mass layoffs will shatter Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's hoped-for legacy as the "education mayor."

We are inviting the city's Congressional delegation to a union summit to take a hard look at the layoffs and the DOE's misguided policies and improper spending.

The DOE carried out the firing despite criticism by City Council members, and rejected union proposals that would have averted the mass layoffs. The layoffs affected mainly black and Latina women. The workers, primarily members of Local 372, are part of the DC 37 family, and we will stick by them.

The city claimed the layoffs were necessary to plug a $38 million budget gap. In reality, there was no valid fiscal reason for the firings. Our analysis puts the savings at $22 million. And the total so-called savings from the layoffs is far less than the $600 million that the DOE added to this year's budget for outside contracts. Surely a close examination of spending on contracts could have found funds to help avoid the layoffs.

At a joint hearing of the City Council Finance and Education committees on Oct. 11, Council members challenged Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott's rationale for the layoffs. Education Chair Robert Jackson suggested that our children are the ultimate victims in a political game that targeted low-paid workers and struggling schools in communities of color. Finance Chair Domenic Recchia Jr. pointed out that during the budget hearings earlier this year, the DOE failed to share its plan to lay off the Aides and other support staff. Had Council members known about the layoffs, Recchia said, they would have tried to prevent them. City Council member Letitia James remarked that 100 job openings posted by the DOE basically match the jobs of the fired workers.

Contracting out kills jobs

When asked why the DOE didn't consider a union proposal to permit 10,000 workers to save the jobs of their coworkers by accepting a reduction in hours and furloughs, Walcott claimed that step would be too disruptive. Isn't it more disruptive to lay off vital support staff, leaving teachers and children without the needed help?

Ernest Logan, head of the principals' union, contradicted Walcott's claim that the layoffs were based on budgets prepared by school principals rather than the misguided policy of the central office with its 1,400 managers, half with salaries averaging $130,000 a year. Astonishingly, the layoffs went through even though, according to a press report, the DOE discovered that it underestimated its spending shortfall by $30 million during the school-based budgeting process.

The layoffs have occurred as the city has squandered $1 billion on infl ated costs and outright fraud in contracted-out projects like the CityTime automated payroll system, computerized personnel record-keeping (NYCAPS), and Future Technology Associates, which investigators say stole $6 million from our schools. We feel the layoffs refl ect a political hit on the union for its years of exposing such waste and fraud.

As we anticipate that the mayor will call for more cuts in his mid-year budget modification this month, we say enough is enough!

The city should hear the union's call end to end the waste in its $10.5 billion spending on outside contracts and go after the millions of dollars in uncollected revenues and fees-steps that would allow the DOE to call back the laid-off workers and prevent further injustices.