Public Employee Press

Mayor Bloomberg's New Year:
January Layoffs

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The city plans to lay off 140 DC 37 members Jan. 14 as part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's latest budget cuts, which aim to axe 2,000 workers by June 30 and eliminate 10,000 municipal jobs by June 2012.

Most of the January layoffs are at the Finance Dept., which is laying off 78 clerical employees and 44 professional and technical workers. The Probation Dept. has scheduled another 18 members for layoff on Jan. 14.

"The city is unnecessarily casting workers into the street at a time of high unemployment when it can actually afford to keep them on the job," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.

Before Bloomberg announced his budget modification in November, the union sent him a plan to bring in $530 million in revenue - enough to avert the 2,000 layoffs - by capturing uncollected taxes and winning concessions from contractors (see pages 8-10).

Minorities and disabled hit hard

The worst of the Finance Dept. layoffs target the Office Machine Aide title, which is filled mainly by minorities and disabled workers. Virtually all of the 78 Office Machine Aides were hired under a program for workers with disabilities. The agency is eliminating the $30,000-a-year OMA position, while it plans to hire 130 provisional employees in a new managerial class at salaries well exceeding $100,000.

Local 1113 President Deborah Pitts said the OMA layoffs reflect the Bloomberg administration's goal of getting rid of civil servants to cut medical and pension costs. She charged Finance with playing a budgetary shell game as it callously fires low-paid clerical workers while retaining provisional employees.

DC 37 was fighting the layoffs with "every possible means," said Roberts.

In December, the DC 37 Legal Dept. filed improper practice charges over the way Finance handled the layoffs, and the union is looking into additional legal action, DC 37 General Counsel Mary O'Connell said.

As January approached, DC 37 met with the administration to explore alternatives and to ensure that the city followed civil service and contractual procedures. The union and a group of Office Machine Aides met with City Council Finance Chair Domenic M. Recchia Jr. to discuss the agency's downsizing.

As PEP went to press, the union reached a tentative agreement to prevent the layoff of 138 Dept. of Transportation workers in Locals 983, 1157 and 376. Under the agreement, which is subject to a mail-ballot vote by the DOT members, they would take off five unpaid furlough days over 10 weeks in early 2011.

On Dec. 6, DC 37 local leaders and members spoke out against Bloomberg's plans for layoffs and service cuts at a City Council Finance Committee hearing.

Santos Crespo, executive vice president of Dept. of Education Employees Local 372, spoke against an $11.3 million cut under a plan to reduce part-time work in city schools. "Budget cuts that lay off support staff, such as School Aides and lunch workers, are weakening our entire school system," he said.

Faye Moore, president of SSEU Local 371, blasted the plan to lay off 370 workers this year at the Administration for Children's Services. She expressed her
outrage that the administration continues to eliminate frontline staff while maintaining more than 70 assistant and deputy commissioners at six-figure salaries.

"The proposed cuts to all the library systems will have a drastic effect," said Eileen Muller, president of Brooklyn Public Library Guild Local 1482. The cuts will restrict access to Internet services, which more patrons need in the troubled economy, and deny safe after-school havens to thousands of children as branches reduce hours, she said.

Budget cuts, layoffs and furloughs will harm members and undermine cultural institutions' educational programs for children and the elderly, said Quasi-Public Employees Local 374 President Cuthbert Dickenson.

Local 1549 2nd Vice President Ralph Palladino said the city should tax the wealthy - who benefited disproportionately during good economic times - rather than laying off municipal workers and gutting services for the poor and middle class.