Public Employee Press

Union targets mayor's civil service plan

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The union is gearing up for a major battle over Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to destroy the civil service system.

DC 37 will oppose state legislation sought by the administration that would undermine civil service protections. At the bargaining table, the union will resist management demands that would erode members' workplace safeguards.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts called the recommendations of the mayor's Workforce Reform Task Force "a power grab by the administration to gain complete control over workers."

The plan, introduced Jan. 6, would devastate the merit and fitness system, which guarantees that non-managerial employees are hired and promoted on the basis of objective criteria rather than personal connections and favoritism, Roberts said. This system has opened an unbiased path to middle-class jobs for successive generations of minorities, women and immigrants, she pointed out.

If implemented, the plan would open the door to the cronyism and corruption that the civil service system was created a century ago to prevent, she said. She pointed to the troubled CityTime payroll project in which four contractors were charged with stealing $80 million as an example of the abuses that can occur when city work is handed to the private sector outside the civil service system.

Shortly after the mayor unveiled his plan, union leaders and activists met to analyze the 23 recommendations and strategize about fighting back. Evelyn Seinfeld, director of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept., briefed local presidents on the plan Jan. 20, and the DC 37 Civil Service Committee studied the recommendations Feb. 9.

"The city is trying to destroy the unions," said Local 1113 President Deborah Pitts, expressing her deep concern about the long-term implications of the plan.

Participants at both meetings zeroed in on a number of especially disturbing proposals:

• Ending oversight by the New York State Civil Service Commission: This change would allow the city to establish its own civil service system, which Seinfeld warned would let the administration "do whatever it wants." The mayor could name a crony to head the city commission, and management could establish personnel rules and titles without getting approval from a neutral body, she said.
  Seinfeld pointed out the importance of the state Civil Service Commission by explaining how it has so far declined to approve city requests, which the union opposed, to reclassify many jobs as noncompetitive.


• Weakening due process protections: The Bloomberg plan would curtail civil service employees' job protections, making it easier for managers to discipline and fire workers, said Local 371 President Faye Moore, who chairs the DC 37 Civil Service Committee.
  Moore blasted the recommendation to let management suspend employees without pay for up to six months, rather than 30 days under current rules, reprimand workers without a hearing, eliminate appeal rights for some disciplinary actions and sharply curtail the power of impartial arbitrators.


• Eroding seniority: The plan would weaken seniority rights by letting agencies use additional factors, qualifications and skills, to determine the order of layoffs.


• More broadbanding and a management review of competitive titles to decide whether to make them noncompetitive: The changes would weaken objective hiring and promotion standards and open the way for the city to reclassify certain union-represented titles with supervisory responsibilities as managerial positions. That would mean thousands of members might no longer be able to move up the civil service ladder through exams but would have to depend upon their supervisors for promotions.