Public Employee Press

Civil Service
Bloomberg plan is a path to corruption

Municipal labor leaders blasted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to overhaul the city's civil service system at a May 9 hearing of the City Council Civil Service and Labor Committee.

Far from reforming the system, Bloomberg's proposed changes would weaken protections for workers and the public and open the door to widespread cronyism and graft, several union experts said.

"It's a recipe for disaster," said Harry Nespoli, chair of the Municipal Labor Committee, which includes 90 unions of city workers. He faulted the mayor's Workforce Reform Task Force for failing to consult the unions.

"The city's so-called reforms would destroy the civil service system that has served the city, its residents and public workers so well for over a century," testified Associate Director David Paskin of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept.

Proposal would allow political hiring

Bloomberg's plan, unveiled in January, would eliminate oversight by the state Civil Service Commission and give the mayor full control of city hiring and firing. The administration could then cut back on competitive exams for municipal jobs and hire underqualified political friends.

Scaling back protections built up over decades, the proposed changes would give the city greater authority over promotions, disciplinary action and layoffs, said Paskin.

The plan would reduce the power of impartial arbitrators, weaken workers' due process rights, end union representation for thousands of supervisors, stretch new employees' probation to three years, weaken seniority rights in layoffs by letting the city shrink units, consolidate job titles and wipe out teacher seniority.

Committee Chair James Sanders Jr. called on the administration to work with the unions on possible changes and criticized Bloomberg for pushing state legislation without labor input.

The corruption and cronyism of recent decades suggests that the instead of eliminating protections, the city should strengthen the civil service system and restrictions on contracting, Local 372 President Santos Crespo testified.

Crespo said the "common thread" of major municipal scandals - the Parking Violations Bureau scam in the 1980s, the perjury conviction of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's housing commissioner, and the recent $80 million theft by contractors for the CityTime payroll project - is that they happened outside the civil service system.

After explaining how public outrage over Tammany Hall graft led to the civil service system, Organization of Staff Analysts Chair Robert Croghan charged that "Mayor Bloomberg seems to have decided that, while Democratic patronage led to corruption, plutocratic patronage is OK."

Local 375 President Behrouz Fathi said the Bloomberg proposal is an ideological and political document that reflects the administration's agenda of undermining unions, giving management unfettered control over the workplace and destroying workers' protections.