Public Employee Press

Civil Service: City flunks the test

Non-enforcement of the merit system blocks career advancement for municipal workers and blights progress for minorities, women and immigrants.

The civil service system is broken.

Unless the city repairs it with guidance from municipal unions, many public employees will stay stuck in dead-end jobs.

And in the long term, the collapse of this important bridge into the middle class threatens the future progress of minorities, women and immigrants.

That was the stark message that leaders and activists from Local 375 and other unions delivered Oct. 17 to the City Council Committee on Civil Service and Labor.

“The civil service system is failing in its mission to provide public employees with real opportunities for career advancement,” said Claude Fort, president of Civil Service Technical Guide Local 375.

“In recent years, the city has failed to enforce civil service principles and regulations,” he said. Provisionals — employees hired at management’s choice without full civil service protections — have mushroomed into the tens of thousands, pushing aside civil service workers.

The city has broad-banded — or consolidated — titles, leaving advancement for many to management’s discretion and blocking career progress for thousands of public employees, 1st Vice President Jon Forster testified.

The city’s failure to schedule exams frequently is denying prospective workers the chance to pursue a secure career in public service and cutting off veteran employees from opportunities for promotion, said Joshua Barnett, chair of the Local 375 Civil Service Committee.

City Planner Elizabeth Eastman, the local’s chair for women’s organizing and for education, testified about her frustration over dwindling promotional opportunities. Although she has improved her skills through training and graduate study, Eastman has been stuck in the same position since 1995 while the Housing Preservation and Development Dept. has routinely bypassed her by hiring outsiders.

City Council Civil Service Committee Chair Joseph P. Addabbo Jr. held the hearing to review the annual report on civil service eligible lists, examinations, provisional appointments and promotions from the Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services.

Barnett said the system suffers from an “endless stream of violations of civil service law.” He said workers are forced to work out of title, demoted unfairly, kept in provisional status for years after the nine-month limit and unfairly disqualified from promotions. The combination of legal loopholes, abuses and the failure to enforce rules have frozen many city workers in lower level positions, he said.

The city should raise funding for DCAS administration and for training managers, who too often are political hires with no civil service background, said 2nd Vice President Michelle Keller.

Nationwide problem
Barnett said the decline of the city’s civil service system reflects a nationwide erosion of workers’ rights over the last 30 years. More recently, he said, “The Bush administration, with the predictable capit-ulation of many Democrats, has moved to strip away the basic civil service rights, including impartial disciplinary hearings, of almost a million federal workers.”

“The decline of the civil service system isn’t an obscure issue facing a few government workers,” Barnett said.

“It represents one part of the attack by the profit system on the basic needs and rights of working people, and it has a disproportionate effect on immigrants, working women and people of color.”

— Gregory N. Heires