PEP February 2010: Editorial, Lillian Roberts. Layoffs cost the city money


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Public Employee Press

Layoffs cost the city money

By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

I am deeply grateful to the members of this great union for their strong faith and confidence in my leadership, which you showed again January 26 in the overwhelming vote to re-elect me to a fourth term as your Executive Director. It is a great honor, a privilege and a sacred trust to lead our city’s largest public employee union. Protecting the dedicated men and women who provide the vital services that make this city run has been my life’s work.

I want to thank all the Local Presidents and Delegates who worked so hard to re-elect me — and to choose an Executive Board who will work closely with me to provide strong leadership for the 125,000 members and 50,000 retirees we represent. President Veronica Montgomery-Costa, Secretary Cliff Koppelman, Treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin and I are not here just for those who voted for us, we are here for every member in every local.

This election made DC 37 stronger. Despite the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, we have chosen activist leaders who will speak out loud and strong for our members’ needs. The overwhelming vote proved how united we are, and that spirit of solidarity gives us the power to take on the difficult challenges of 2010.

We need to wrap up the Salary Review process to resolve inequities in pay that affect certain titles, and move ahead toward negotiating a new economic agreement. With the current contract expiring in March, I have called on our Local Presidents to put together their members’ bargaining demands and meet this month as DC 37’s Negotiating Committee.
In this time of soaring nationwide joblessness and huge state and city budget deficits, we will need to fight harder than ever, together with our community and political allies, to prevent damaging cutbacks in education, health care and social services.
We need to educate the governor, the mayor and the public about the folly of closing budget gaps by dumping loyal, productive public employees onto the unemployment lines, because mass layoffs damage the whole city economy. Like a stone thrown in a lake, every dollar paid to a working man or woman creates what economists call a “ripple effect” as the worker buys food and clothing, pays rent, gets to work and hopefully spends a little on entertainment. In fact, every worker helps support another two-and-a-half jobs.

Laying off a worker making $35,000 kills off $87,500 in additional economic activity and wipes out other people’s jobs and the taxes they pay, according to our Research Department.

Because of the costs of unemployment insurance, food stamps, family health care at public institutions and lost taxes, that layoff actually saves the city only $3,300 a year. The huge cost to the public far outweighs this small saving. For every dollar the mayor saves by a layoff, the people of the city lose $26. Every layoff starts a destructive downward spiral that hurts us all.

We need to protect our school system from descending into two classes of “separate but unequal” institutions, both supported by public money — private charter schools that move into public school buildings without community approval and handpick their students, and underfunded public schools for most of the city’s children.
We need to make the Civil Service system fairer by pressing the city to appoint employees from lists in strict rank order or give skipped employees an explanation and the right to a hearing.
We need to keep the pressure on to cut contracting out. In this time of growing need, with school and social service workers already laid off, the massive waste in handing $9 billion of the taxpayers’ money to the private sector is unconscionable.

I called my slate Members First, and I pledge to you that as we shape our union’s destiny, Members First will be our watchword. You deserve no less.