By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

As we mourn the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed in April 1968, I am recommitting myself to continuing the struggles led by Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela until there is no room left anywhere in our society for discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age or sexual orientation.

Right in our own backyard, there is a giant loophole in the civil service system that opens wide the gate to political patronage and discrimination that can deny opportunity to those who have already been shut out for too long. It's called the one-in-three rule, and I am dedicated to ending it.

Using this outdated rule, management can select at will from among the top three eligible candidates on a civil service list and skip over two of the three top scorers - without even giving a reason and with no review or appeal. This is especially unfair in promotions, where employees have already passed probation and served successfully in a lower title.

And since anyone passed over three times is automatically removed as an eligible, ruthless application of one-in-three can quickly exhaust eligible lists and let management hire personal and political favorites as provisionals. Using one-in-three undermines the fundamental fairness of civil service, damages the morale of dedicated longtime workers and inevitably reduces productivity.

More than 100 years ago, to get rid of political patronage and the resulting corruption, New York became the first city to adopt a civil service system calling for hiring and promotions to be based on merit and fitness for the job, determined by examinations as far as possible. Since the mid-1900s - in contrast to the racial and gender discrimination that prevailed in the private sector - civil service has been an essential path to upward mobility for minorities and women.

The one-in-three rule invites discrimination

Keeping this route open is vital as we try to narrow the vast and growing income disparity between the wealthy 1 percent and the rest of us. Equal access to civil service jobs offers hope for minorities, single moms and the many women who have become their family's main breadwinners - but the one-in-three rule invites discrimination.

In recent years, the city has lost major bias cases in the courts and been cited for discrimination by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. An official audit found that almost 600 discrimination complaints were filed against the Dept. of Education in a recent five-year period, with the settlements costing city taxpayers - including our members - over $1 million.

I am calling on the mayor, the City Council and the state Legislature to take action to end the city's use of the one-in-three rule and move to a strict list-order policy with no option for discrimination. This is the normal practice in state agencies, and it works fine. State legislation to amend the Civil Service Law so the city can correct its policy is being introduced by Assembly member Peter Abbate and Senator Diane Savino.

With the backing of Public Advocate Letitia James and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio recently shut down the previous administration's plan to contract out more hospital dialysis clinics (see page 5). The broad support for this decision and the sensitivity it showed to the needs of patients and public service workers give me a sense of optimism for strengthening our civil service system.

What we want here is simple justice for the dedicated employees who keep our city running. It's time for New York City to live by the goal Dr. King expressed so eloquently in his "I Have a Dream" speech: End the one-in-three rule to make it impossible for people seeking advancement to be judged by the color of their skin.