Public Employee Press

Know your Executive Director
Lillian Roberts: leading the struggle

Lillian Roberts was re-elected by the union's delegates Nov. 27, unanimously and unopposed, to a fifth term as executive director of District Council 37. Coming issues of PEP will include articles about President Eddie Rodriguez, Secretary Cliff Koppelman, Treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin and the DC 37 Executive Board.

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

"I am humbled and honored to be reelected to lead the members of District Council 37," said Executive Director Lillian Roberts. "I am very grateful for the confidence and trust placed in me. I pledge to continue our fight to protect the interests of all members and retirees."

Roberts faces three immediate hurdles: completing repairs at the union's Barclay Street headquarters, which were damaged extensively Oct. 29 by Hurricane Sandy, negotiating a fair and equitable contract for DC 37's 115,000 members and protecting their hard-won pensions and benefits, and electing New York City's next mayor - "one who is 'for the people' and who respects unions, the civil service system and the city's public employees," she said.

"Under the current mayor we have witnessed vast waste, corruption and the greatest transfer of public funds into private pockets in the history of our city," Roberts said. "The outgoing mayor has laid off workers and ignored our carefully researched proposals to save taxpayers millions of dollars."

A staunch fighter for dignity and opportunities for members, she has led the fightback against contracting out public services and replacing unionized public employees with overpaid consultants, which under the current administration has opened the door to corruption, bias and an inevitable decline in city services.

Roberts issued a series of White Papers that revealed the facts about privatization schemes and blunders, including the CityTime payroll computerization scandal, where an outside contract ballooned from $70 million to $700 million and private consultants had to repay $500 million to the city to avoid jail.

To expose the Bloomberg administration's wasteful use of federal funds in contracting out, she led a hearing at the union hall in December 2012 before the city's members of Congress.

Defending public services

An outspoken opponent of the mayor's support of the rich 1 percent through skewed tax policies and corporate welfare, she has regularly blasted Bloomberg for not asking the rich to pay their fair share and spoken out against the to-the-bone budget cuts affecting vital public services that DC 37 members provide in social services, health care, education and public libraries.

"As we consider our choices for the city's next mayor, we cannot ignore the numbers - the increase in public school failures, the growing numbers of homeless families and record joblessness, especially in minority communities, that indelibly tarnish Mayor Bloomberg's legacy," Roberts said.

Roberts is dedicated to the labor movement and has been in the forefront as an organizer and leader for over five decades. Her beginnings as a nurse's aideand union leader in Chicago during the 1960s, when she organized 22,000 hospital workers against tough opposition, showed early on that Lillian Roberts is about union building. She was the first African American woman elected to the Executive Board of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, DC 37's parent union, and later the first to serve as New York State commissioner of labor.

"My adult life has been about the struggle for decent jobs, fairness in the workplace, and opportunity for all people," she said. In 1968, she went to jail for two weeks rather than back down as she led a strike of state hospital workers.

As executive director of DC 37, Roberts has lifted the quality of life for DC 37 members by increasing wages and benefits in contracts, clearing career paths for members through the civil service system and civilianization, and lobbying effectively for labor-friendly legislation.

At DC 37 Roberts helped create the union's hallmark education program, which takes members from the basics through the College of New Rochelle - making DC 37 the only union with its own college campus - and launched the Municipal Employees Housing Program, the nation's most comprehensive affordable-housing initiative developed by a labor union.

Under her leadership, union political action expanded the city's residency requirement to include the six surrounding counties and strengthened the law requiring a cost-benefit analysis before any contracting out that could displace city workers.

"I have spent my life fighting for our members," said Roberts. "I can look back with pride on the gains we have won, ready us to negotiate a new contract with the city, and commit us to fighting at City Hall, in Albany and in Washington for our members' rights and social and economic justice for all."