Public Employee Press

490 jobs saved at NYCHA
but 75 layoffs loom for 2014 at community and senior centers

"The sequester cuts are landing on the backs of workers and tenants." - DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The city's $70 billion budget for next year includes extra funds that will allow the New York City Housing Authority to avoid most of the 565 layoffs it had planned because of an unexpected shortfall of $250 million caused by automatic federal spending cuts.

But NYCHA still plans to move forward with up to 75 of the anticipated layoffs, which were announced in June, as other agencies and outside contractors take over four of its senior centers and 45 of its community centers. The budget allocates $13 million to the Dept. of Youth and Community Development and the Dept. for the Aging for the centers, whose services the agencies plan to contract out.

"The layoffs aren't scheduled until the beginning of 2014, so we will have time to fight them," said Anthony Wells, president of Social Service Employees Union Local 371, which represents the workers at the centers.

Cutting social services

Wells said that while he was pleased the downsizing won't be as severe as expected, he was also deeply outraged that NYCHA is scaling back its social services and going ahead with the layoffs of the workers at the 49 centers.

NYCHA will continue to run 58 centers through at least 2014.

The mass layoffs at NYCHA apparently mark the first major impact of the automatic federal cuts, known as the sequester, in New York City. Pushed by Republican "deficit hawks" in Congress, the cuts were triggered earlier this year. The sequester puts as many as 2 million jobs at risk nationwide and, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office, will slow the country's economic growth.

NYCHA General Manager Cecil R. House notified employees of the federal cutbacks and his plan for layoffs June 12 in an email message. He also planned a hiring freeze, deep cuts in tenant services and slashes in Section 8 subsidies.

After NYCHA announced the cuts, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts and Associate Director Henry Garrido met with House to press for a solution. Roberts and Garrido also met with U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer to discuss NYCHA funding. Wells and Walthene Primus, president of Housing Authority Clericals Local 957, denounced the 565 expected layoffs June 13 at an emergency joint hearing of the City Council Finance and Public Housing committees. The original layoff plan targeted 225 clerical workers, 190 employees at the senior and community centers and 115 workers in community service titles represented by Local 768.

The breakthrough on additional funding came as the union worked with City Council members while the legislators were concluding budget negotiation and with the Bloomberg administration.

Joshua Bennett, president of the Civil Service Employees Technical Guild chapter at NYCHA, charged the authority with using the sequester cuts as a pretext to accelerate its agenda of downsizing, privatizing, cutting services and leasing properties for the construction of luxury apartments.

"This is going to have a devastating impact on the community," said Bennett on the day of the emergency hearing of the council committees.

"The sequester cuts are landing on the backs of workers and tenants," Garrido said, noting that the authority hasn't discussed the possibility of cutting the positions of highly paid managers or seriously searched for further alternative funding to prevent the 75 expected layoffs and service reductions. Primus said she would like to see the union work on a strategy to push for a "steady stream of federal funding" to prevent NYCHA from being hit with further unexpected cuts by Washington.

Saying DC 37 will keep up its fight against the possible layoffs, Roberts underscored the union's special commitment to public housing.

"As a union, our mission is to protect the jobs of our members, whose work is dedicated to ensuring that the tenants have a decent quality of life," she said. "At the same time, we are also mindful that about 15,000 of our members are NYCHA tenants, so that gives us a double incentive to protect public housing," Roberts said.

More than 400,000 people reside in NYCHA public housing projects, and the agency administers Section 8 vouchers for another 250,000 who pay 30 percent of their income for rental apartments.