Public Employee Press

Local 375 on contracting out
“Put teeth in the law”

Local 375 is pressing the City Council to strengthen the local law that restricts contracting out. “While it’s a step in the right direction, the law lacks teeth,” said Claude Fort, president of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375.

“Local Law 35 needs to provide better protection for civil servants whose jobs are threatened,” Mr. Fort said. “This is also a matter of good government, because contracting out so often wastes taxpayer dollars.”

Jon Forster, the local’s first vice president, and Leon Soffin, a Local 375 retiree and advisor, testified Jan. 24 before the City Council Committee on Contracts. The committee, chaired by Robert Jackson, is exploring whether the legislation should be modified.

Cost analysis
The law requires agencies to do a comparative cost analysis if they plan to award a contract of more than $100,000 that will displace city workers.

But, as Local 375 representatives testified, the law is ineffective because an agency may go ahead with its plan even if its report shows that contracting won’t save money.

Local 375’s effort reflects the concern of public employees citywide for strengthening legal protections against contracting out. With the support of DC 37, the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group representing city unions, has set up a task force to recommend improvements in Local Law 35.

At the hearing, Mr. Jackson acknowledged that if agencies proceed with contracting proposals that jeopardize jobs or waste tax dollars, all the City Council can do is hold a hearing.

“City agencies typically justify such contracts by saying that they do not have enough staff or
in-house expertise to do the job,” Soffin said.

Local 375 wants the law to prohibit contracting out unless a cost-benefit analysis shows it will save at least 10 percent of the cost of doing the job in-house.

Forster informed the City Council Contracts Committee about instances where the law failed:

• Design and Construction, which recently put five contracts out to bid for construction management work usually done by resident engineers represented by Local 375.
• Environmental Protection, which last year sought to farm out construction management of Water Tunnel No. 3. Local 375 stopped the process in negotiations, not through Local Law 35.
• Parks and Recreation, where the city is using the shrunken ranks of surveyors represented by Local 375 to justify the use of outside consultants.

As the city downsizes and lays off employees, contracting out in a sense becomes inevitable, Forster suggested.

Local Law 35 should curb such practices by requiring agencies to perform cost-benefit analyses before they use budget restorations to hire consultants to do the work once done by public employees, Forster said.

And agencies should be required to fill vacancies before considering contracting out, he said.

— Gregory N. Heires