Public Employee Press

Budgets slash jobs and services
Where are the cuts in outside contracts?

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Austerity budgets proposed in Albany and New York City would devastate the city's public hospital system, schools, libraries and other sevices, wipe out 10,000 municipal jobs and cause nearly 10,000 state employee layoffs.

Despite a recent projection of $2 billion in unexpected revenue, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's $65.6 billion proposed budget for fi scal year 2012, which begins July 1, sticks with his November plan to cut the positions of 5,400 teachers and lay off 1,900 other civilian workers by June 30, 2012.

Under the current budget, the administration still plans to lay off 80 workers at the Health Dept. and 25 at Probation by June 30.

War on public employees

"From one end of this country to the other, there is a war on public employees. Lawmakers are using budget defi cits as a smokescreen for attacking our jobs, pensions and benefits and the services that sustain working families and our communities,"DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said.

"To balance the city budget, the mayor is seeking deep concessions from public employees," Roberts said. "We have to ask, where are the cuts in his $10 billion-worth of private contracts?"

Bloomberg blames his latest cuts on the loss of $2 billion in education and health-care funding in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed $139 billion state budget. The city could implement further job and service cuts if the $600 million of additional state aid that Bloomberg is counting on does not materialize.

DC 37 mobilizes

Already, DC 37 is mobilizing against the state and city cuts.

Some 700 members and supporters marched against Bloomberg's proposed layoffs Feb. 24 in a City Hall demonstration spearheaded by Local 375 with the backing of several other DC 37 locals (see Workers Rally).

On Feb. 25, DC 37 hosted a public hearing that examined waste in the city's spending on consultants and contractors. Testimony from the offi ces of the city and state comptrollers, City Council members and union experts demonstrated that eliminating the 10 most wasteful contracts would make layoffs unnecessary (see Massive waste and fraud in contracting out).

Activists boarded a fl otilla of buses March 1 for the annual Albany lobby day of DC 37's parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

On the same day, members of the union's library locals joined library workers from around the state to lobby legislators. City libraries would take a $19.7 million hit in Bloomberg's budget, which projects 300 layoffs of library workers, and lose millions more under Cuomo's budget, which would chop statewide assistance to a 15-year low.

Bloomberg's budget would also cut subsidies for cultural institutions by $8.1 million, causing about 200 layoffs. Smaller numbers of layoffs would hit other agencies, and the Parks Dept. would convert almost 1,500 full-time jobs to nine-month part-time positions.

DC 37 is working with unions and community groups in the GrowingTogetherNY Coalition to press legislators and the governor to extend the Personal Income Tax surcharge. The "millionaires' tax" is scheduled to expire this year, cutting state revenue $1 billion in the current fi scal year and by $5 billion in subsequent years.

Years of state tax cuts - mainly for business and the wealthy - have created a structural defi cit, with revenue falling short of spending needs. The tax cuts implemented since the mid-1990s will cost the state $13.5 billion this year, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. The state deficit is about $10 billion.
Local leaders will testify on Bloomberg's proposed budget in upcoming City Council hearings, members will descend on Albany for a mass lobbying day in May, and the union is planning a huge June rally for a fair budget.

"This whole notion that public employees with their so-called bloated pay and benefi ts are somehow to blame for budget gaps is a gross distortion of reality," DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido said. "The pressure on city, state and federal budgets would basically not exist if it were not for the years of tax cuts and the huge revenue losses caused by the Great Recession.

For more on DC 37's fight-back campaign, see the special PEP section on pages 13-20.