PEP, June 2009: Bloomberg budget calls for layoffs, service cuts and more contracting out

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The Bloomberg administration plans to continue spending over $9 billion a year on wasteful contracting out while laying off nearly 4,000 public employees in the year beginning July 1.

Released on May 1, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s executive budget cuts spending on city services from $61.2 billion this year to $59.4 billion in fiscal year 2010.

With this conservative budget, New York City has lined up with states and cities that are undermining President Barak Obama’s economic stimulus plan by eliminating jobs while almost 14 million workers are unemployed in the nation’s deepest recession since the 1930s.

“The mayor’s budget will hurt the city’s middle- and low-income communities by cutting vital social-safety-net services and the jobs of the workers who provide them,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.

“When New Yorkers are already suffering, it’s insensitive to try to balance the budget on the backs of the municipal employees who provide services that people need now more than ever,” Roberts said. “This especially makes no sense when the city is handing over $9 billion of its $60 billion budget to overpriced outside consultants and contractors.”

The proposed budget is not final until the City Council adopts it, and DC 37 is pressing the council to restore many of the mayor’s cuts. In late May, local leaders testified at City Council hearings against Bloomberg’s layoffs and service reductions.

“We urge all members and retirees to write, call and e-mail their City Council representatives and the mayor’s office to express their opposition to these cuts,” said DC 37 Political Action Director Wanda Williams.

By late May, the union had received 1,508 layoff notices from the city — not including the expected cuts of 943 jobs in the libraries and 989 civilian positions in the Police Dept.

Combined with personnel reductions enacted since November 2008, the 2010 budget would chop about 13,600 positions from the city’s workforce, 9,800 through attrition and 3,800 through layoffs, which are scheduled to hit employees on June 26.

The budget ax has already fallen on DC 37 members at city-funded museums and zoos, which are in a fiscal squeeze caused by the recession. The union is fighting 48 layoffs at the Wildlife Conservation Society. About a dozen layoffs have occurred at other cultural institutions, where the union has avoided deeper job cuts through discussions with employers that have led to less painful steps, such as furloughs and temporary closings.

The New York Public Library and Brooklyn Children’s Museum are offering employees a severance package, and the Brooklyn Public Library is expected to make a similar offer.

“None of these numbers are etched in stone,” said DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Dennis Sullivan, underscoring the union’s determination to fight the layoffs. “The union is carrying out intense negotiations with the city to explore alternatives.”

In talks with the Municipal Labor Committee, the Bloomberg administration is demanding $200 million in health-care savings from city workers and another $200 million through the creation of a new pension tier with poorer benefits for future employees.

The city had threatened municipal unions with 7,000 more layoffs if they failed to accept the mayor’s plan to save $350 million by making employees pay 10 percent of the city’s health insurance costs. The budget dropped that proposal, but Bloomberg said he would bring it up again next year.

Bloomberg is proposing to raise $1 billion by increasing the sales tax 0.5 percent, eliminating the clothing exemption and putting a nickel tax on grocery bags.

Subway ads hit contracting

On May 18, DC 37 launched a subway ad campaign attacking the administration policy reflected in the mayor’s executive budget proposal, which funnels billions of dollars to outside contractors while it slashes services and lays off thousands of unionized public employees.

The ads urge the public to visit the union’s Web site at www.dc37.net, where they can send City Hall a message against the contracting out and layoffs.

At a May 19 hearing of the City Council Public Safety Committee, Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez kicked off the union’s drive to convince the council to restore funds to the budget to prevent layoffs.

He criticized the plan to eliminate 989 civilian positions in the Police Dept. and recounted the local’s long battle to replace Police Officers assigned to clerical duties with less costly civilians.

“These difficult times demand that this obvious cost savings to the city be fully implemented without further delay,” said Rodriguez. Early in May, Roberts wrote Bloomberg to request a meeting on civilianization and the layoffs at the Police Dept.

Preparing for a May 26 news conference and rally against hundreds of planned layoffs at the Administration for Children’s Services, SSEU Local 371 President Faye Moore pointed out that the city plans to contract out services without realizing any savings and denounced the cuts as ideologically driven.