"How am I going to pay my rent?"

Ivonne Miranda, one of more than 60 Custodial Assistants laid off by the New York Police Dept. Jan. 10, worries that she will soon have no food on the table and no roof over her head.

But her greatest concern is the impact of her layoff on her children.
Without income and health insurance, Ms. Miranda will have more difficulty caring for her 13-year-old autistic son, Harry Cruz. And she won’t be able to help her 17-year-old son, Alex Nazario, fulfill his dream of going to college.

“I don’t have a husband who can help me,” said Ms. Miranda, 50. “Who can help me? I am a single parent. I don’t want to go back to public assistance.”

Ms. Miranda, who pays $495 a month in rent and fears eviction from her apartment at Sunview Houses in the Bronx, figures the first thing to go will be her 1998 Nissan. The car drains her household budget by $182 each month, not including insurance. Next will be the telephone.

With rumors of layoffs at the 43rd Police Precinct in the Bronx circulating last summer, Ms. Miranda had already started to cut back before she received the impersonal two-page layoff notice from Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on Dec. 27. Ms. Miranda, who earned $703 after taxes every two weeks, didn’t buy any Christmas presents for her kids.

When word of the layoffs reached the precinct, “I saw people crying, especially the older ones,” she said. A sympathetic Police Officer felt compelled to call her aside and offer support after Ms. Miranda wondered aloud whether she would be driven to suicide. Subsequently, DC 37 Rep Edwin Badillo took Ms. Miranda, who is experiencing weight loss and bouts with insomnia, to the union’s Personal Services Unit.

Ms. Miranda is applying for unemployment benefits and food stamps. She would like to find work as a cook or waitress. But with the country going through its longest slump in the job market in decades, Ms. Miranda, who never finished high school, isn’t optimistic.

“If I can’t find work, I am going to return to Puerto Rico to live with my family,” said Ms. Miranda, who emigrated from the island at 15 to live with a relative who found her a job. “My kids don’t want to go to Puerto Rico,” she said. “But I say, ‘Honey, if we don’t have no chance here, what are we going to do?’ ”

Embittered that the layoffs are targeting the working poor and minorities, Ms. Miranda said, “They tell us, Hispanics and Blacks, to vote. But this is what causes civil war. The mayor don’t care. He’s rich.”

— Gregory N. Heires

“They want us back on welfare”

Catherine Watson was a welfare-to-work success story. But for her seven years of dedicated service to the Dept. of Education, she was given a pink slip just two weeks before Christmas. Along with about 300 other employees at the DOE, her last day on the job was Jan. 2.

Before she got her job, Ms. Watson was enrolled in the Work Experience Program at the Board of Education, where she did clerical work in exchange for her welfare benefits. Now she could find herself back on welfare.

Like many of her colleagues Ms. Watson feels betrayed by the system. “We worked our way up from welfare,” says Ms. Watson with a tinge of pride. “Giuliani took us off of welfare. Now Bloomberg wants to put us back on.”

Ms. Watson was a Clerical Associate and a member of Local 1251 Clerical-Administrative Employees. She had worked in the renewal unit at DOE’s 65 Court St. offices in downtown Brooklyn. Her unit was responsible for renewing the licenses of teachers in the city’s public schools. Ms. Watson, who is 60 years old, says that she was planning on working another four years before she retired.

— Alfredo Alvarado

“They are getting rid of the middle class”

Maurice Whitaker was among several Bookkeepers laid off Jan. 2 at the Dept. of Education. He figures he will soon land on his feet thanks to his education and work experience in marketing and finance. He is considering a move to Las Vegas, where he believes job prospects are good and the weather is better.

“I am very philosophical,” he said. “One door is closed, but two are opened.” But during an interview about his layoff, Mr. Whitaker said he was particularly disheartened because he views the Jan. 2 mass layoff of 286 school employees represented by DC 37 as a harsh indication of how working families are finding it harder to live in the city.

The firings are a bleak reminder of how cuts in government spending are undermining civil service and closing a gateway into the middle class for minorities and women, according to Mr. Whitaker. “I got my degree at CUNY,” said Mr. Whitaker. “Had they been doing all these cutbacks ten years ago, I don’t think I would have been able to work my way through college.”

“They seem to be trying to weed out the middle class,” Mr. Whitaker said. “There is eventually only going to be very rich and very poor in this city. This country is really going down the tubes.”

Maf Misbah Uddin, president of Accountants, Actuaries and Statisticians Local 1407, whose members include Bookkeepers, sharply criticized the department’s decision to eliminate 29 Bookkeeper titles. (Several of the targeted individuals escaped being laid off as they were shifted into lower-paid clerical positions.)

“It is outrageous that DOE is laying off its employees while it is spending an estimated $25 million on contracts with accounting, consulting and temp agencies to do the work of our members,” Mr. Uddin said. “These are real individuals — not budget lines — who are being affected by the department’s decision. It’s a tragedy.”

— Gregory N. Heires

“I feel cheated and used”

Computer Service Technician Clyve Grant helped train consultants at the Dept. of Education. His reward? A pink slip.

He is one of 22 members of Data Processing Employees Local 2627 who were laid off from the department on Jan. 2. “We felt we were helping people,” said Mr. Grant, “Now they are taking our jobs.”

“I feel cheated and used,” Mr. Grant said. “My livelihood is gone and I have been railroaded out of a job.” Mr. Grant did trouble-shooting over the phone for the department’s 1,200 schools. He was a provisional worker with five years on the job.

Mr. Grant said he especially resented that the department is retaining overpaid consultants while axing its own employees. “You should invest in your own,” Mr. Grant said. “We were doing all the work before the consultants arrived.” At 35, Mr. Grant feels confident about landing on his feet. But he says his older laid off colleagues close to retirement will likely have a tougher time finding work and will receive smaller pensions than they had planned on.

Mr. Grant and his wife have a 1-year-old child, Azariah. His wife drives a bus, so they have health insurance, but their family income has been cut in half. “Thank God for her. She’s really understanding and says, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything while you look for a job.’”