Public Employee Press

Budget Battle
City budget deal saves jobs
Last-minute pact stops 650 school layoffs


After DC 37 organized, lobbied and rallied for months against proposed budget cuts that would have laid off up to 900 library workers, wiped out 47,000 child-care slots, closed libraries and swimming pools, the City Council and the mayor agreed on a 2013 spending plan without the layoffs.

Late in the budget process the union learned that the Dept. of Education was considering plans to lay off about 650 school support workers.

Intense negotiations among the union, DOE and key City Council leaders resulted in a no-layoff agreement that protects school workers represented by DC 37 for the 2013 fiscal year, which began July 1, and brings back 225 of the workers laid off last year, with a union/DOE committee to find appropriate positions.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Finance Committee Chair Domenic Recchia and Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson had worked with the union to reach the no-layoff agreement.

On behalf of Local 372's members, Local President Santos Crespo Jr. thanked Roberts, Associate Director Henry Garrido, the union research and legal departments and the City Council leaders for their role in the talks.

Child care saved

The new budget, which takes effect July 1, also saves affordable day care for as many as 42,000 children, most of whom reside in city housing projects and low income neighborhoods.

In the battle to protect public services and jobs, local presidents and activists joined Roberts and Garrido in addressing the City Council Finance Committee June 6 and demanding that the budget not be balanced on the backs of city workers.

Appearing before Recchia, Roberts criticized the Bloomberg administration for "relentlessly privatizing public services and city programs."

Roberts also hit the DOE for considering layoffs on top of the 643 School Aides and Parent Coordinators who were fired last year. She also said that it was "unconscionable" for the city to not use the $466 million the city received in restitution from the CityTime contract to rehire laid off workers and restore services.

Garrido told the City Council that the administration's failure to properly oversee contracting-out schemes had let consultants defraud the city of up to $580 million. "Taxpayers should be outraged at the waste of money and the business-as-usual attitude of this administration," said Garrido.

Also addressing the committee were Local 1549 2nd Vice President Ralph Palladino, Local 1559 President Peter Vreeland and union activists Precious Edwards and Abigail Goldberg from Local 1321, Mary Carroll from Local 1482 and Gelene Scarborough from Local 374.

"We organized our members throughout the city and sent this mayor a very clear message that if our interests are threatened, we will fight back as hard as we can," said Roberts.