By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

MAYOR BLOOMBERG has launched a broad-scale attack on city workers. Our pay, our benefits, our pensions and the civil service system that protects employees and the public from corruption and favoritism are all in danger. This is the worst assault on our jobs, our families and our communities in half a century.

But we in DC 37 are up to the challenge. We can win this fight with our activist membership, community partners and powerful labor allies. I am encouraged that Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders has pledged the full support of our 1.6-millionmember national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in our fightback.

One huge threat to our livelihood - contracting out - suffered a severe blow in December when the U.S. Justice Department arrested four consultants from the CityTime payroll project on charges of stealing $80 million of the taxpayers' money.

$80 million may not seem like much to our billionaire mayor, but I measure money in paychecks for members who have to put food on the table and funding for health care, education and all the services our members provide for the people of our city.

Bloomberg told New Yorkers that, as a business leader, he knew how to take care of the public's hard-earned money in tough times. The truth is the cash register has been wide open for years with nobody watching the store as costs on the CityTime project ballooned 1,000 percent while the work was overdue and incomplete.

Didn't this so-called manager suspect anything when 200 CityTime consultants got $400,000 a year for work that our union members do for about $70,000? Or when dozens of them claimed they worked 85 hours every week and others billed the city even while they vacationed in Europe?

Fortunately, we helped elect a comptroller with the independence and strength to stand up to the mayor. John Liu blew the whistle on CityTime in November and made Bloomberg agree to fire the outside contractors and give the work to city employees later this year.

And now Liu has rejected a $286 million payout for a project that smells so fishy he calls it CityTime 2. The price of the contract to improve the 911 emergency call system has soared from $1.3 billion to $2 billion, although it isn't even half done.

The cost overruns on CityTime 1 and CityTime 2 have wasted more than $1 billion of our money, and these are just two of the city's 18,000 outside contracts.

The mayor says there's no money for raises. He claims he has to lay off more workers and cut services.

Show us where the money went!

We say open the books on contracting out! Show us where our money went! The public has the right to know the facts about the mayor's colossal handouts to the private sector at this time of deepening need for so many New Yorkers. We deserve open public hearings into the city's contract spending, now, before the city lays off one more worker or shreds our health-care safety net or raises taxes and fees again.

CityTime 1 and 2 and all contracted-out projects share a dangerous feature: Without civil service safeguards, the door is wide open to cronyism and corruption. Contractors hire employees based on who they know and who they are. Only 2 percent of this diverse city's contracting out funds go to firms led by minorities or women, according to Comptroller Liu.

In contrast, civil service has offered a fair path to upward mobility for generations, helping people advance into decent jobs based on their abilities, regardless of their race or sex. Now the mayor wants to rewrite the law to destroy the civil service system. His plan (see page 11) would turn city government into a giant CityTime.

Most of this plan would need state legislation. As we fight hard to kill it in Albany, we are going to need more members than ever to get involved. You can help save the merit system and join the fight to protect our jobs and pensions by calling our Political Action Department at 212-815-1550.