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Public
Employee Press
LAYOFFS: The
human toll
No holiday cheer for pregnant
mom
By ALFREDO ALVARADO
While most New Yorkers
are busy making their plans for the holiday season, fired School Aide Maritza
Gebauer will be working on her resumé. Gebauer will also be waiting anxiously
for the arrival of her third child. Her due date is Christmas Day.
Gebauer
was one of the 530 School Aides laid off by the Dept. of Education on Nov. 13.
For Gebauer, who lives in Glendale, Queens, with her husband and growing
family, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s cuts could not have come at a worse
time. “I just bought a brand-new SUV,” Gebauer said Oct. 9 at an all-day
orientation session DOE held for the soon-to-be-fired school employees at its
downtown Brooklyn headquarters. Representatives from the DC 37 Schools Division
met throughout the day with the Local 372 members to offer their support. Experts
from the New York State Dept. of Labor answered questions about procedures for
filing for unemployment benefits, and DOE staff fielded pension and benefits inquiries.
But only time can answer the toughest questions: How will this layoff during
the worst recession in a quarter century dim the future of School Aide Maritza
Gebauer, her children and her expected baby? How badly will the loss of support
services damage the education of the students?
She'll
miss the kids
The DC 37 Schools Division is planning sessions
in December to help the laid-off School Aides cope with this difficult time. The
union’s Personal Services Unit, Education Fund and Health and Security Plan
will be involved.
Gebauer has worked at the Knowledge and Power Preparatory
Academy, a middle school in Brooklyn for two years. She has several credits toward
an associate degree in liberal arts at the Borough of Manhattan Community College,
and she hopes to become a teacher.
Her husband has a full-time job as
a machinist, but the recession has created deep concerns about his job. “The
number of orders coming in to the company where he works keeps getting smaller,”
she admits.
For Gebauer, the human toll of the layoffs includes the loss
of vital support services to the children at the special Brooklyn school. “I
really enjoyed working at the school, especially the kids. I’m going to miss
them,” said Gebauer, who thought she had a stable job and a fulfilling career
working with children.
“I never thought that this would happen to
me,” she said.
“The kids need us, the teachers
need us and we need our jobs.”
— Gloria Rivera, Local 372
(At
right in photo below with Carolina Bastida.) Like most of the 530 School Aides who were laid
off recently by the Dept. of Education, Local 372 members Carolina Bastida and
Gloria Rivera were shocked to find out that they were joining the ranks of the
nation’s nearly 16 million unemployed workers.
“I don’t
know what I’m going to do,” said Rivera, a single mother of two who
lives in Brooklyn.
Both Bastida and Rivera worked at P.S. 186, the Dr.
Irving Gladstone School, in Brooklyn District 20. “I was shocked because
I was working there for three years and everything seemed to be going well. The
kids really respond well to us and the teachers, too,” said Bastida, who
also has two children of her own.
Bastida and Rivera attended an orientation
session at DOE on Friday, Oct. 9, for those who were targeted to be laid off on
the following Monday, Oct. 12. The city’s layoff plans were put on ice for
a month when DC 37 and Local 372 went to court and won a temporary restraining
order that helped the School Aides stay on payroll through Nov. 13.
“We’re
lucky that we have a good union that fights for us,” said Rivera. “We
have to keep fighting to keep our jobs because the kids need us and the teachers
need us and we need our jobs.” |
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