Public Employee Press

DC 37 attacks anti-civil service plan

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

At hearings before the New York State Civil Service Commission June 10 and the City Council Civil Service and Labor Committee June 11, DC 37 leaders spoke out against the city plan to switch hundreds of competitive jobs into the noncompetitive class and consolidate titles and levels. Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Martha Hirst issued the proposal to meet a state mandate to cut the number of provisional employees on the city payroll.

Union leaders urged the City Council committee, chaired by Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., to push DCAS to offer more civil service tests, press agencies to hire from civil service lists and provide funding for additional testing.

“District Council 37 opposes the DCAS plan to reclassify competitive titles to non-competitive and create exempt titles as a way to reduce the number of provisionals,” DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Dennis Sullivan told the state CSC, which can reject the proposal or order changes. “We urge you to disapprove those aspects of the plan that do anything other than implement an aggressive exam schedule and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure proper movement of civil service lists.”

The DCAS plan would fundamentally change the civil service system by reclassifying a range of job titles from entry to managerial levels as noncompetitive, in effect snatching away promotion opportunities and due process rights from thousands of city workers in about 300 titles represented by DC 37.

The plan does not address the real problem that keeps many workers as provisionals: DCAS’s failure to offer civil service tests — in some cases for decades — unless forced by litigation initiated by labor unions, according to Local 375’s Jon Forster, who testified at City Hall. Also, DCAS has been complacent about moving civil service lists and follows a one-in-three hiring policy, which gives management the option of choosing its favorite among three successive candidates on civil service lists.

“DCAS has taken the easy way out by trying to reduce the number of provisional titles by simply changing their status without thinking through the impact on ­services,” said Ralph Palladino, 2nd vice president of Local 1549, who testified at City Hall with President Eddie Rodriguez. “It’s the old and tired theme of ‘doing more with less,’ ” he said. “In fact, it is really ­doing less with less.”

Return to patronage system
“This is a misguided plan that would deny the public a tested workforce and take away employees’ rights in disciplinary hearings,” said SSEU Local 371 President Faye Moore. “This plan is an attack on the civil service merit system.”

The plan undermines the civil service system and if approved, would signal a return to the days of “Boss” Tweed, who gave jobs based on arbitrary favoritism, and not the merit and fitness standards the civil service system enforces, union leaders said.

“Í have witnessed the decimation of the Laborers local since DCAS re-classified our title,” said Local 924 President Kyle Simmons. “DCAS refuses to acknowledge the New York State Constitution and civil service law on testing.”

DCAS has argued that offering exams for thousands of civil service titles is not economically feasible. But Sullivan pointed out, “The state constitution and civil service laws do not make an exception to the merit and fitness requirement for economic reasons.”

Union speakers repeatedly urged the state commission to reject the DCAS plan and make DCAS keep titles competitive, offer education and experience exams and protect workers’ due process rights and promotional opportunities.