Public Employee Press

Mayor fails test on civil service

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

After the 2007 Long Beach court decision, the Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services adopted a five-year plan to comply with Civil Service Law by replacing longtime provisionals with employees from civil service lists.

But DCAS has used this process as a smokescreen while the Bloomberg administration hires high-priced consultants and low-paid temporary workers to evade the basic civil service principle of hiring public employees based on merit and fitness.

Overall, instead of the replacement process called for by Long Beach, "The public service workforce shrank as the city contracted out jobs traditionally done by our members," DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Evelyn Seinfeld told a City Council hearing in March. She charged that the administration has evaded the merit and fitness principles by contracting with private agencies to supply thousands of temps. Since 2008, DCAS has cut the count of provisionals from 37,000 to 23,000, but the number of civil servants has declined substantially.

Move the lists

"More and more of the city's work is contracted out, with no clear merit and fitness requirements applying to contract workers," said Seinfeld.

Crafty city techniques undermine civil service and yank away employees' career ladders. Artificially cutting provisionals by consolidating multiple job titles into one with several levels means that, "the only way to advance within the title is at the boss's discretion!" she said.

Appointing employees to exempt or noncompetitive titles or hiring consultants for high-level positions, while the mayor's hiring freeze prevents appointments from civil service lists to replace provisionals, blocks career advancement.

"It is shameful that DC 37 has to sue to move civil service lists when Civil Service Law requires it," Seinfeld testified. "This illegal and cynical practice is deeply demoralizing to dedicated public employees whose career advancement is blocked by a crony-laden system - the very thing civil service aimed to reform."

Urging the City Council to work closely with DC 37 to make the administration and DCAS comply with the law, Seinfeld said, "Cut the charade and move the lists."