PEP, April 2010: Protect public and jobs

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts blasted Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget March 4 for wasting millions of dollars by “continuing to contract out even more work while proposing to reduce public services and lay off thousands of city workers.”

Her written testimony, delivered to the City Council’s Finance and Contract Committee by Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido, charged that the city uses an “army of consultants hired without background checks,” whose work is often “substandard” and then needs to be corrected by union members. (For more on contracting out, see Union fights growth of contracting out .

Roberts and leaders from more than one dozen locals hit the budget’s cuts in services and jobs at hearings held in March by Council committees.

Backlogs at HRA

Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549 Vice President Ralph Palladino called for reinstating the stock transfer and commuter taxes to help the city raise much needed revenue.

He also pointed out that fines for the city’s violations of state workplace violence regulations, enacted to protect employees and the public, “will cost millions of taxpayers’ dollars.”

The budget would eliminate over 600 social service jobs through attrition or layoffs, including 75 at the Dept. of Homeless Services, 300 at the Human Resources Administration and 250 at the Administration for Children’s Services, where 32 Child Protective Units would be closed and caseloads would rise from 9 to 10. Social Service Employees Union Local 371 President Faye Moore contested ACS’s claim that increased caseloads will not endanger children.

“We dispute any assertion that an increase in caseloads will not increase the potential for children at risk of abuse or neglect to slip through the cracks,” Moore told the Welfare Committee March 8.

At the same hearing, Palladino pointed out that the city has also targeted Eligibility Specialists for layoffs, despite huge backlogs at the Human Resources Administration. “HRA is already understaffed and Food Stamp applicants wait long hours in overcrowded centers because of past staff cuts,” he testified.

Guards should be annualized

At the Public Safety Committee hearing on March 11, Local 372 Executive Vice President Santos Crespo called for annualizing the nearly 2,200 School Crossing Guards the local represents.

“Saving money by not annualizing School Crossing Guards is unconscionable,” he said. SCGs are still hourly employees limited to 20 hours of work per week at $10.23 per hour. When schools are closed they are not paid.

Members at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History and the New York Zoological Society will also feel the impact of the mayor’s proposed cuts in their 2011 budgets.

“I don’t want to have to ask another employee to consider early retirement,” Local 1559 President Peter Vreeland told the Cultural Affairs Committee March 16. Vreeland represents members at the Museum of Natural History.

Vreeland was joined by Local 1503 President Fabian Beranbaum, who represents workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Local 1501 President Robert Herkommer, who testified on behalf of members at the Wildlife Conservation Society; and Local 1306 President Reggie Qadar, who spoke on behalf of members at the American Museum of Natural History.

With the city’s three library systems facing budget reductions of $4.7 million for next year, Local 374 President Cuthbert Dickenson testified about the devastating impact of the cuts on the maintenance personnel he represents.

Local presidents Margalit Susser of Queens Library Guild Local 1321, Eileen Muller of Brooklyn Library Guild Local 1482 and Carol Thomas of New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 spoke out at the hearing. Muller pointed out that the demand for library services is greater than ever, and Thomas charged that the cuts are shortsighted, “because they reduce our investment in our greatest resource, our children.”