Public Employee Press

Privatized parks

A non-profit group exploits a non-union workforce to maintain Central Park

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The Central Park Conservancy is widely credited with reviving the crown jewel of the city’s park system, once likened to a dust bowl and plagued by crime, poor maintenance and inadequate municipal funding since the mid-1970s fiscal crisis.

The public-private partnership has brought about the renaissance by exploiting a non-union workforce while the ranks of unionized municipal workers have all but disappeared.
“There is a basic question of equal rights here,” said Henry Garrido, DC 37 assistant to the associate director.

“You have parallel workforces where one group is unionized and has good benefits while another group doesn’t have union protection and is made up of employees who can be fired at the whim of their employer.”

Today, the Dept. of Parks and Recreation has a skeletal field staff of less than 25 blue-collar workers and an additional staff of about 80 clerical and professional employees assigned to the park. “It breaks you down spiritually,” said a DC 37 member whose job responsibilities have been eroded as the municipal workforce has dropped over the years.

About 250 to 300 year-round Conservancy workers maintain the park. As spring approaches each year, the Conservancy employs a similar number of seasonal employees to supplement its full-time workforce.

City workforce plummets
Years ago, hundreds of city Parks employees toiled at Central Park, the city veteran worker recalled. The decline in Central Park parallels a drop throughout the entire parks system, where the number of municipal workers has plummeted from 7,500 in 1975 to just over 2,200 today. Fourteen DC 37 locals represent Parks workers.

The fiscal crisis of the 1970s opened the door for widespread attacks on public employee unions and efforts to “rethink” traditional government services. In New York City and elsewhere, politicians and public policy experts began promoting alternative ways of delivering public services, such as contracting out work and handing responsibilities to non-profit, public-private partnerships like the Central Park Conservancy.

Since its founding in 1980, the Central Park Conservancy has invested more than $450 million to improve and maintain Central Park, assuming the traditional responsibility of the city Parks Dept. Today, spending by more than 50 park-specific non-profits, “friends of the parks” groups and conservancies, including the Prospect Park Alliance and Bryant Park Corp., amounts to about $100 million a year, according to a 2007 report by the New Yorkers for Parks and the Citizens Budget Commission.

But the city has not used its savings to pour funds into the parks in needy communities. New Yorkers for Parks gives a failing grade to 20 percent of the neighborhood parks. The group’s 2007 report with the Citizens Budget Commission found a “greater incidence of poorly maintained parks in poorer areas of the City.”

“While in many instances these groups have improved the parks, their proliferation raises serious questions,” said Edgar deJesús, interim director of the DC 37 Organizing Dept. “Are we moving toward a situation in which you have parks for the few?”

“Public spaces are being converted into exclusive playgrounds for the rich while the city has abandoned its commitment to maintaining the parks system for everyone else. As a society, is that what we want,” he asked.

But as policymakers, community groups and politicians debate the pros and cons of the public-private partnership model, the workers at the Central Park Conservancy confront concrete real-life issues: tough working conditions, favoritism, a limited benefits package, workplace safety concerns, on-the-job injuries, a climate of fear, several mean-spirited supervisors and a lack of job security.

In recent weeks, DC 37 staff organizers and volunteer member organizers have visited Conservancy workers in their homes as the union prepares to launch an organizing drive.

“Last week, when there was lightning and thunder and 50- to 60-mile-per-hour winds, we were still working out there,” said one worker in an interview with PEP in January.

A longtime employee at the Conservancy, he said the workers are forced to remain outside during snowstorms, heavy rains and heat waves, and they get only one 15-minute break each day. By contrast, city workers are allowed periodic breaks and may go inside during bitter heat or cold.

Complaining about the lack of job protections, workers told PEP that when the Conservancy distributed a handbook last year, employees were required to sign a form acknowledging that they could be dismissed at any time.

Organizing for a better future
This fall, the Conservancy forced workers to use rakes rather than blowers to pick up leaves after wealthy residents and environmentalists complained about the noise and fumes, according to Conservancy workers. Consequently, some workers suffer from aches and pains caused by the repetitive motion. “Putting aside the environmental questions about the blowers, the issue for the union is that management changed working conditions without consulting workers and addressing their concerns,” deJesús said.

“It’s tough work,” said one employee, charging that picking up debris, using weed-whackers, installing and breaking down fences, removing trees and raking takes a heavy human toll. One worker lost his thumb and another was impaled by a piece of wood that went through his leg, the worker said.

The employee complained about favoritism and inequities. Last year, the Conservancy gave 4 percent raises to their favorites and 2 percent or nothing at all to the rest. “We aren’t keeping up with the cost of living,” the male worker said.

“If this whole thing goes down,” the worker said of the organizing drive, “I am going to be so happy. I’m doing this not just for myself. I’m doing it for the future of the people coming in.”