Public Employee Press

Part 2 in a series of articles on the attacks on government and public employees

Bloomberg plan would gut Civil Service

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

DC 37 and municipal unions reacted with outrage in January when the Bloomberg administration unveiled its plan for far-reaching changes that would wipe out the fairness and objectivity of the civil service system.

"This plan is an attempt to replace the principles of merit and fitness with unfettered mayoral control over hiring, firing and promoting city workers," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.

"The administration claims it wants to 'modernize' the workforce, but these proposals would hurt employees by giving excessive power to management and hurt the public by opening the door to corruption and cronyism. Do we really want to return to Tammany Hall?" she asked.

The sweeping changes recommended Jan. 6 by the mayor's Workforce Reform Task Force would let the city lay off employees out of seniority order, reduce the role of civil service tests in hiring and promotions, let managers give provisionals of their choosing extra credit on tests and end supervision of city personnel actions by the state Civil Service Commission.

Corruption and Patronage

The recommendations - most would need state legislation - would dismantle laws and rules built up since 1883 to provide fairness and prevent favoritism, corruption and political patronage in the workplace. Couched in language that presents proposed changes as worker-friendly and empowering, the plan would in fact erode workplace protections.

The plan calls for changes long opposed by unions that would weaken objective hiring criteria, stretch out probation, establish merit pay, reduce seniority rights, allow for selective downsizing, remove supervisors from unions, diminish arbitrators' right to reverse disciplinary actions and let the city evade state law restricting the use of provisionals by keeping temporary workers for three years.

When Bloomberg mentioned his plan in his annual "State of the City" address on Jan. 19, he said, "Let us save tens of millions of dollars on our workforce by reforming our antiquated civil service laws that stifle innovation and add unnecessary costs."

"The plan talks about 'empowering' workers," said DC 37 Civil Service Committee Chair Faye Moore, who is the president of SSEU Local 371. "I don't see, for instance, how expanding probation empowers workers."

She called the report an ideological document that reflects the current mayor's management bias. "Mayors serve for limited terms, and ideology should not determine the city's employment practices," she said.

Certainly the task force showed no effort to empower workers as it developed its 23 recommendations without ever seeking union input, and when city officials presented the findings to the Municipal Labor Committee on Jan. 7, the tone was combative. Leaders of the umbrella organization for city unions were dismissively told that if they wanted copies of the report, they should look on the city's Web site.

The report calls civil service an "outdated system" that "prevents the City from delivering the best services possible for each hard-earned taxpayer dollar." It complains about "inflexible" and "needlessly restrictive" rules that supposedly undermine management's ability to punish bad workers and reward good workers with promotions.

No State Oversight

"This plan would destroy civil service, not improve it," said DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Evelyn Seinfeld. "It should be burned and buried."

Seemingly neutral personnel jargon permeates the report, but in reality, the writing is full of code words for changes to give management the upper hand in the workplace.

Seinfeld said the recommendation to remove the state Civil Service Commission's jurisdiction over the city is particularly disturbing. Ending CSC oversight would let the city establish noncompetitive and exempt titles at will and unilaterally adopt personnel rules, she added, pointing out that the commission has already blocked some city attempts to make jobs noncompetitive.

"This is War!"

"The commission upholds the integrity of the civil service system," Seinfeld said. "Removing its oversight would tilt the playing field in favor of City Hall, jeopardizing the rights of civil servants."

Other troubling proposed changes, Seinfeld said, include

• more broad-banding and consolidation of titles, weakening objective hiring and promotion standards;
• clustering results of civil service exam scores on exams ("band scoring") to expand the candidate pool the city can choose from under the "one in three" rule;
• reviewing all competitive titles to determine if they should be reclassified as noncompetitive or exempt;
• establishing independent civil service systems at the Transit Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which would undermine the protections of workers there;
• expanding the "managerial and confidential" category, removing union protection from many titles;
• establishing smaller layoff units within agencies, undermining seniority
• ending employees' right to appeal some disciplinary actions.