Public Employee Press

City Council hearings:
Union blasts mayor’s plan

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Testifying at City Council hearings in late March, union leaders continued their attack on Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to eliminate thousands of municipal jobs and drastically reduce services to the city’s poorest communities in his budget for Fiscal Year 2011, which begins July 1.

In a dramatic show of union solidarity, more than 100 Lifeguards from Local 461 and Lifeguard Supervisors from Local 508 massed on the steps of City Hall March 24 and then packed the City Council gallery to protest the mayor’s proposal to close four city pools and shorten the swimming season by two weeks this summer.

“I find it hard to believe that with a budget of over $300 million, they can’t find $1.5 million to keep the pools open,” Local 508 President Peter Stein told the City Council’s Committee on Parks and Recreation.

Earlier on March 24, DC 37 Field Services Director Barbara Edmonds expressed the union’s concerns about the growing number of charter schools and the Dept. of Education’s waste of millions of dollars on overpaid consultants.

City pools affected

“Public school students should not have to give up space and resources to create a separate system that draws away funds, good jobs and motivated students,” she testified before the council’s Education Committee.

Last year the DOE renewed consultant contracts worth $54 million for 63 computer consultants, said Edmonds, pointing out that the work could have been done for less by members of DC 37’s Local 2627.

Local 372 Executive Vice President Santos Crespo harshly criticized DOE’s use of private contractors, which he said resulted in the layoffs of 647 Local 372 members last year. “Laying off dedicated workers to save money to pay for outside contracts is a breach of morality, ethics, economics and the law,” he said, asking the City Council to hold a hearing on DOE’s outside contracts as they relate to layoffs, “before it is too late in the budget process.” Local 372 contends that schools that are low-performing most likely have been either understaffed or stripped of student support services by layoffs.

Services at the Child Health Clinics and the Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene are also scheduled to be cut. “These layoffs target bureaus and departments which have recently been called upon to protect New Yorkers from the H1N1 flu virus, such as the Bureau of Immunizations,” Local 436 President Judith Arroyo told the Health Committee March 18. “Restoration of $4 million is needed so these bureaus can continue to protect the public’s health.” (For more on DOHMH cuts, see pages 11-13.)

The cuts facing the city’s swimming pools are part of an overall 11 percent reduction in the budget of the Dept. of Parks and Recreation, which would wipe out 173 full time positions, eliminate 735 low-wage transitional jobs from the Job Training Participants program and possibly close some parks.

Seeking oversight for contracts

“The parks are going to go back to where they were 20 years ago with the drugs and all the problems that we had back then,” Local 983 Vice President Joe Puleo told the Committee on Parks and Recreation March 24. “Not only do these cuts need to stop, but you need to put more money into the parks,” he told the committee.

DC 37 is seeking legislation to require oversight of private contracts by the City Council and the City Comptroller to stop the wasteful spending.