Public Employee Press

Upgrades for temps and part-timers
700 hospital workers get full-time jobs at HHC

DC 37 won another round in the fightback against privatization when the Health and Hospitals Corp. agreed to convert to permanent annual employment status 700 per diem workers who have been assigned full-time hours for 18 months or longer at city hospitals and health-care facilities.

"This is a major victory for DC 37 to have HHC recognize that for years its public hospitals network were grossly understaffed and management resorted to using temps and hourly part timers - who were denied union benefits - to compensate for staffing shortages," said DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido. "We fought long and hard to have HHC grant these hard-working employees per annum status and the union benefits they are entitled to."

When the Bloomberg administration implemented its overhaul plan that slashed HHC jobs and cut services to the bone, DC 37 went to battle for workers who were asked to do more with less. The union contended the plan created a two-tier workforce at HHC that replaced vital civil servants with temp agency workers.

Local presidents Carmen Charles, Anthony Wells and Eddie Rodriguez were relentless advocates on this issue. Charles said, "HHC had a longtime practice of hiring part-time workers and using them full time. It was a manipulation that kept headcounts low."

After many labor-management meetings with DC 37 leaders and presidents of Locals 299, 371, 375, 420, 768, 924, 983, 1087, 1187, 1407, 1549 and 2627 which represent such titles as accountants, therapists, laborers, data programmers, clerical staff and numerous health-care workers at HHC, the union finally won.

A memo issued by HHC in May stated a correction would be made to its automatic payroll and timekeeping systems to appoint permanent full-time annual status to eligible employees with permanent civil service status, per diems who have worked full time for at least 18 months, and those without permanent status but who have worked full time for 18 months or longer.

HHC began the upgrades May 22 for its biweekly payroll and June 5 for its weekly payroll.

HHC will apply the union benefits that these workers are eligible for, such as accrued vacation time, holiday pay, paid jury leave, time and a half for overtime and hours, full-time union dues deductions. The workers are also entitled to the welfare benefits - including dental, legal, optical and prescription drugs.

"These are benefits employees should have been receiving but due to the coding of per diems it was difficult to administer and often wrong," Garrido said. "HHC was not paying people correctly. DC 37 kept this issue on the front burner with HHC President Dr. Ram Raju and the new administration to fix this injustice. No new full-time HHC staff will be hired as per diem workers in order to prevent this from happening again."

Affected HHC employees are advised to work with their local or grievance rep to insure that their status is correctly updated.