By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

More than 50,000 angry union members and community residents took the fightback against job and service cuts to a higher level March 5, and I am proud of the huge turnout by DC 37 activists.

By marching to City Hall and lining Broadway all the way past Canal Street, we told the mayor and the governor loud and clear: Get your priorities straight. Protect health care and education and other vital services, save money by eliminating contracting out, and reform the tax system to make the wealthy pay their fair share. And we are keeping the pressure on. We are also fighting layoffs caused by divisive forces that would like to see our members pitted against the community in a desperate struggle for jobs. There are those who would like to make enemies of people who live side-by-side and pray together in church, because this would weaken labor and the community.

Even where there was no shortage of money, agencies have laid off experienced, dedicated city employees — workers providing important services — and handed their jobs to nonprofit organizations. When budget problems threatened to close youth and senior centers at the New York City Housing Authority, we convinced the City Council to provide funds to save the centers. But NYCHA went ahead and threw 200 loyal employees on the street anyway; their paychecks are being diverted to others.
We will not fall for these cynical divide-and-conquer tactics. As we showed in the mighty March 5 demonstration, the communities of New York City and the labor movement are natural allies. With unemployment rising to oppressive levels, we in DC37 believe that community people have every right to want jobs.

Our battle is not with the community. With 80 percent of DC 37 members living within the five boroughs, we are part of the community. We send our children to the same public schools, we go to the same hospitals when we are sick, and we suffer just like other residents when public services are cut.

I believe the way for community people to get good jobs is through the civil service system, so that they can be part of the city workforce with job protection and a union — instead of working for an organization under a contract that can be rescinded as easily as it was given. Our members are proud to be civil service and proud to be union. We have a big tent, and newcomers are always welcome.

This year is District Council 37’s 65th anniversary, and throughout those years our members have sweated and sacrificed to get their jobs and worked hard to build a union that fights to defend them and protect the civil service system.

Civil service: pathway to jobs
Civil service has been an open doorway to decent middle-class jobs for many generations of minorities and immigrants. The merit and fitness principles of civil service provide the best opportunity for people in communities throughout the city to be treated equally and fairly as they apply for jobs, and they provide a fair system of upward mobility for those who become city employees.

Cutting city workers’ benefits and contracting out public services would undermine the unions that protect the fairness of the civil service system and open the door to patronage, cronyism and corruption. I believe the taxpayers and voters of New York City deserve the protection of having a civil service workforce.

This union is fighting to prevent devastating cuts in the services our members provide to the communities of New York, and I want every commissioner and agency head to know that we will not tolerate tampering with the civil service system for the benefit of fat cats and politicians.