Public Employee Press

At 39th annual Legislative Conference
Activists chart political agenda

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

DC 37 activists decided on the union's legislative priorities for the coming year on Oct. 25 at the 39th annual Legislative Conference. Political Action Director Wanda Williams and Political Action Committee Chair Dennis Ifill, the president of Local 1359, welcomed some 200 activists to the daylong Saturday gathering.

DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido addressed the group, stressing that after helping get candidates elected to office, the union has to hold them accountable.

"We have to be vigilant and in constant communication with our colleagues on the job and our neighbors in the community to make sure the politicians do the right thing," Garrido said.

Keynote speaker New York State Sen. Jeffrey D. Klein promised to continue fighting to increase the minimum wage and make New York affordable for the working class.

Manhattan City Council member Ben Kallos spoke, saying that he is committed to keeping work in-house and would push for hiring an additional 400 911 Operators. He praised the union's civilianization campaign at the Police Dept. and said he would push for city hiring lists to move faster. "I work for you," Kallos said.

Union priorities

Williams and the activists emphasized three high legislative priorities.

• Passing the Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act to ban employers from using credit reports to screen job applicants. Nearly half of all employers now run credit checks on job applicants, although credit reports are notoriously inaccurate and do not predict job performance. "This is a workplace issue and a labor issue," said Robert Martin, associate director of the union's Municipal Employees Legal Services Plan. The act already has 40 sponsors in the City Council. "We want all 51 members of the City Council to support this bill," said Williams.

• Another priority is closing down the city's Work Experience Program, in which city agencies often use unpaid welfare recipients to displace union workers. The program's 15,000 participants are required to work to receive public assistance but are not considered employees, get no paychecks and no training. DC 37 strongly opposes unpaid workfare programs nationwide.

• DC 37 will be fighting to extend the rent regulations that would expire in June, and it will continue to press for affordable housing. In a panel discussion, Metropolitan Council on Housing Executive Director Jaron Benjamin called public housing the last bastion of affordable housing in the city. Some 15,000 DC 37 members live in public housing. Community Voices Heard activist Gabriel Strachota said that under the Bloomberg administration the number of homeless New Yorkers had expanded to a record 70,000 people.

The conference also included a presentation by DC 37 Executive Board member Jon Forster on labor's battle against global warming. "This is an issue we need to embrace," Forster said. He encouraged the activists to join the union's newly created Climate Change Committee, which worked with 83 unions to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people for the Sept. 21 People's Climate March.

After the presentations, members joined in workshop sessions, where they reviewed proposals for the City Council and state Legislature dealing with pensions, education, civil service, safety and retiree issues. In the pension workshop, participants approved proposals that included continued support for health insurance and supplemental benefits for retirees of New York City's Off-Track Betting Corp.

In the session on safety and health issues, members called for improving the collection and reporting of compensation information required from employees to include more useful information on injury and illness.

Members passed proposals on civil service that included continued support for the civilianization of the New York Police Dept. and all other uniformed agencies.

Participants also celebrated 2014's legislative accomplishments, including bills dealing with Queens Library reforms, medical marijuana, assaults on Crossing Guards, and funds for day care, Mitchell-Lama housing and the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption program.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli gave the closing remarks and thanked members for their dedicated service to the city. "We wouldn't have the services that we have without you," DiNapoli said.