Public Employee Press

DC 37 battles NYCHA over layoffs and contracting

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The union is fighting possible layoffs at the New York City Housing Authority, which has notified 160 employees that their jobs are at risk.

District Council 37 is campaigning in the streets, in the media and at the negotiating table to avert the layoffs and redeploy workers whose jobs are to be eliminated as NYCHA closes senior and youth centers.

"It is outrageous that NYCHA Chair John Rhea is moving ahead with this downsizing, with the support of Mayor Bloomberg, especially when the union worked with the City Council earlier this year to have millions of dollars restored to the agency's budget," said DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido.

In November, NYCHA sent "at risk" letters to the workers who will be affected by the scheduled closing of 45 centers this month and 55 more in June.

The agency has informed the union that as many as 74 workers may be laid off Jan. 5 - though the actual number is expected to be much lower. If the redeployment works out, less than 15 of those workers will face a real threat of layoff. But a second wave of the 160 employees who received the letters may face termination in June.

Consultants run amok

On Nov. 14, dozens of DC 37 leaders and activists protested downsizing and contracting out at NYCHA in a noontime demonstration at the agency's headquarters at 250 Broadway in downtown Manhattan. Activists carried signs with messages such as "Public Housing Not for Sale," "NYCHA Stop the Waste," "Stop Consultant Waste," "Stop Laying Off Public Workers Now!" and "Stop Privatizing NYCHA."

"The youth centers and senior centers serve a vulnerable population," SSEU Local 371 President Anthony Wells said. "When you privatize them, you show no commitment to those people." NYCHA is shifting control of the centers to the Dept. for the Aging and the Dept. of Youth and Community Development, which in turn are hiring nonprofits to run the centers.

"We will continue this fight until there is a new policy on consultants," said Claude Fort, president of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375, which called the rally and is fighting the agency's use of consultants who do design and other technical work.

"We are outraged," said Walthene Primus, president of Housing Authority Clerical Local 957. "We aren't taking this."

"Look at that," said Robert Ajaye, president of Electronic Processing Personnel Local 2627, pointing to a sign held by a protestor that read, "Lay off consultants."

Other speakers included Alma Roper, executive vice president of Local 1549, Neal Frumkin, Solidarity Committee co-chair of the DC 37 Retirees Association, Community Associate Marthena Carrington, Community Coordinator Sadie Sanders and Joshua Barnett, head of Local 375's NYCHA chapter.

Meanwhile, David Moog, the senior analyst at the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept., gathered intelligence at a job fair for positions in the new centers sponsored by the Dept. of Youth and Community Development and NYCHA. He found that most of the jobs at the centers will be part-time and pay between $9 and $11 an hour.

"They are shifting well-paying jobs to low-wage jobs as they privatize the work and hand it to nonprofits," he said.