By ALFREDO ALVARADO

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts led the charge as union members throughout the city launched a massive leafleting and petition campaign to save city hospitals from Governor George E. Pataki’s budget ax.

The petition drive went citywide March 27 at Harlem Hospital, Woodhull in Brooklyn, Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, North Central Bronx and Bellevue in Manhattan.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) recently ranked these city hospitals among the best in the nation. Yet the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. is now facing a proposed budget cut of $200 million in Medicaid funds and the possible loss of 4,000 jobs in the HHC network.

“Years of hard work and dedicated service by DC 37 members helped to make our public hospitals successful,” said a fired up Ms. Roberts in front of Bellevue Hospital, where members were collecting signatures. “Now all that hard work is being jeopardized.”

Members of Laborers Local 924, Clerical Administrative Employees Local 1549 and DC 37 staff assisted in coordinating the petition and leafleting drive at Harlem Hospital.

“I’ve already seen the reduction in services,” said Daniel Linares, a member of Local 1549, who works at Metropolitan Hospital and helped gather signatures in front of Harlem Hospital.

Residents of Harlem did not have to be convinced to join the movement to save their hospital. “They saved my life two times,” said Rosa Moon as she signed the petition. Ms. Moon received treatment at Harlem Hospital for alcoholism and a difficult pregnancy.

“The working man can’t take it anymore,” said angry Harlem resident Frank Gaddy. “What more can they cut?”

Local political leaders added their voices to the anti-cutback teams, speaking out to community media at the petition sites. At Elmhurst Hospital, for example, State Senators John Sabini and Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Flushing) and Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette (D-Jackson Heights) joined members of NYC Motor Vehicles Local 983 and the Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420 as they gathered signatures.

“We have a lot of patients who are very scared,” said Susan Flanzaraich, a member of Social Service Employees Local 371 and a Supervising Hospital Care Investigator at Elmhurst. “We’re as good or better than any hospital in New York. You can tell by all of the patients who are signing the petition.”