Public Employee Press

Civil service group honors three at DC 37

The Civil Service Merit Council honored three DC 37 leaders for their achievements in championing the rights of municipal workers at its 36th annual awards ceremony on June 5.

The lights of the Brooklyn Bridge glistened in the background as Local 375 1st Vice President Jon Forster, DC 37 Retirees Association Vice President Bill Dworkin and Public Employee Press Editor Bill Schleicher received awards for their dedication to the civil service system and the labor movement.

Civil service employees “work in unheralded fashion, in good times and bad, to make New York City run,” said city Comptroller William Thompson, the keynote speaker. Local 375’s Al Engel, who worked for the city since 1940 and died Feb. 1, started the CSMC in 1971 to preserve and advance the rights of civil servants.

“For 35 years I have worked with the giants of labor and management, people who affected the lives of millions of New Yorkers and their families,” said Dworkin.

He accepted the Labor Leadership Award for his work as an activist for rank-and-file city workers, and his leadership in the Managerial Employees Association. Dworkin started his civil service career in 1972, and served as a shop steward, delegate and executive board member of Local 1549.

Forster’s continuing battle to preserve the privacy, dignity and autonomy of city workers by putting workplace surveillance in labor’s crosshairs led to his Civil Service Labor Leadership Award. “Whether by palm scanners or GPS systems, we cannot allow invasive technology to send us backwards by tracking workers and quantifying productivity at agencies with no history of using time clocks,” Forster said.

Schleicher’s acceptance speech came after a clergyman prayed for the safety of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The veteran labor editor tied the war in Iraq to civil service and union issues: “Let’s support our troops by bringing them home, right now, in one piece, and by ending this war, which is not only killing our brave sons and daughters but also is draining the ­resources that we civil service workers need to provide vital services for the people of our city,” he said.