By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Parks Dept. employees who graduated from welfare to union wages rallied at City Hall Jan. 16 to protect their jobs.

With DC 37 and the advocacy group Community Voices Heard, they demanded that the city honor its promise to the working poor and drop a plan to contract out the positions to a temporary employment agency.

In their final hours in office, former Mayor Rudolf W. Giuliani and departing Human Resources Administration Commissioner Jason Turner closed the book on 3,500 success stories --Parks Opportunity Program participants who moved from welfare to full-time work at $9.38 per hour in March 2001.

But the Giuliani administration cut a deal that gave the program's $75 million in federal funding to the Florida-based Tempforce agency. The contract lets the firm offer the same jobs to the POP workers, cut their pay $1.43 an hour and cancel their DC 37 union benefits and protections.

"We clean parks all day, we want decent pay," chanted the demonstrators, who braved cold winds to cling to their union jobs. They were joined by leaders of DC 37 and Locals 983, 1549, 371, 375 and 1219, and City Council member Bill Perkins.

"$7.95 an hour can't pay my rent"
The protesters fought to save their own jobs and urged the city to hire another 10,000 off the welfare roles, as planned, over the next three years.

"This is a social justice issue," said Mark Rosenthal, president of Local 983, which represents the POP workers. Most of the 3,500 threatened employees are single mothers on their first jobs since leaving public assistance. "By putting a middleman between these workers and their promised wages," Rosenthal said, "the city is allowing Tempforce to profiteer off people's misery."

"This is my first opportunity to get off welfare and hold a decent job with decent pay," said Jackie Parsons, a Seasonal Aide and mother of five. "To cut my wage to $7.95 an hour is just not right. It's not enough to pay my rent."

Although she had worked four years in the Work Experience Program while receiving welfare checks, Ms. Parsons said this is her first paid job with decent wages and union benefits - and she likes it. "I help beautify the parks, I plant daffodils and bulbs, fix benches and swings. I am proud of my work," she said.

"HRA's goal is supposedly to move people to self-sufficiency," said Charles Ensley, president of SSEU Local 371. "This scheme is outrageous public policy that takes money out of workers' pockets and drops it into the laps of privateers."

Experts say the Tempforce deal squeezes out municipal employees on several levels. Not only does it violate the Transitional Jobs law by not offering comparable wages, it displaces entry-level job titles. It also threatens to affect hundreds of HRA Job Opportunity Specialists, who are trained to place thousands from the welfare roles into transitional jobs.

Clerical-Administrative Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez said he would call for a federal investigation. "We want to know where the money's going," he said, "and why a private agency is doing work the city's Job Specialists are trained for."

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg offered no comment as he passed, but he stopped briefly to speak to 6-year-old demonstrator Shayron Porter. "I'm here to save my grandma's job," the youngster told "Mayor Mike."

DC 37 Deputy Administrator Zachary Ramsey recognized that the new mayor had inherited this problem, and called Giuliani's eleventh hour contract "underhanded." DC 37, he said, "will keep the pressure on to give people real jobs with real benefits."

The first terminations are scheduled for Feb. 26, but as PEP went to press, union leaders were seeking to meet with Mayor Bloomberg on the issue.

"The POP program works," Mr. Rosenthal said. "Without it, it's back to welfare hotels or homelessness for many of these employees. We are asking Mayor Bloomberg to give these workers a chance."