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PEP May 2011
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Public Employee Press

Contracting out: struggles continue
Labor calls for stronger local law

More city employee unions are getting aboard the drive to rein in contracting out that DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts launched eight years ago. At a hearing April 11, leaders of the Municipal Labor Committee called on the City Council to strengthen Local Law 35, which was enacted to curb wasteful outsourcing and prevent it from displacing city workers.

DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido and the heads of the MLC, Teachers and Service Employees Local 246 showed that the law had failed to stop the city from using contracting out to get rid of municipal workers, citing clear cases where employees lost their jobs or were transferred because of contracting out.

The Bloomberg administration violates the law's intent, said Garrido, by routinely certifying that its outside contracts will not displace any employees. In 50,000 contract transactions since 2005, the city has not admitted to one single instance of displacement.

In recent years, the city procured billions of dollars in information technology services without ever evaluating whether using the consultants would displace city workers, he said.

A year after the Corrections Dept. awarded a $5 million contract for gates and doors that paid locksmiths $85 an hour, the agency transferred DC 37 locksmiths out of Riker's Island and eliminated their overtime.

The MLC recommended requiring the city to notify unions about possible displacement before soliciting contracts; carry out rigorous cost-benefit analyses of contracting proposals; hold hearings to allow unions to contest outsourcing plans, and cover successor contracts.

 
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