Public Employee Press

Union prepares to expand parks organizing drive

District Council 37 is laying the groundwork to expand its organizing campaign in Central Park to other city parks where nonprofit groups employ workers in jobs once done by DC 37 members.

The DC 37 Organizing Dept. trained nearly 20 union members and staff on June 13-14 in the nuts and bolts of organizing to prepare for an upcoming “blitz,” a weekend that involves visiting Parks workers at their homes to urge them to support the recruitment drive. As PEP went to press, the department had not yet set the date for the blitz. The participants in the training session pledged to join the union’s army of about 150 volunteer member organizers, who are playing a key role in the organizing campaign.

Last fall, DC 37 launched its effort to sign up workers at the Central Park Conservancy, which employs about 300 full-time and seasonal workers who are eligible to join the union.

The VMOs accompany union workers on home visits and worksite visits. Several volunteers are Parks workers themselves, and they have provided the union with crucial information about employment practices and personnel.

Now that DC 37 is well into the campaign at Central Park, it plans to systematically start targeting other nonprofits in city parks, where more than 40 such groups may employ up to 5,000 workers who don’t enjoy union rights, protections and benefits.

“When I see union membership declining and see it becoming more expensive to live in the city, I see a connection there,” said Erik O’Brien, a member of American Museum of Natural History Local 1559, who took part in the recent training session. “There is a lot of injustice out there. I’m into people and would like to help out those who aren’t lucky enough to have a union.”

At the June 13 training session, Edgar deJesus, interim director of the DC 37 Organizing Dept., linked the long-term decline and stagnation of wages and assault on worker rights to the erosion of union representation in recent decades.

He noted that while DC 37 used to represent as many as 7,500 workers in city parks a generation ago, the union now has about 2,200 members working in city parks.

Over the years, the Dept. of Parks and Recreation has reduced its workforce through layoffs and attrition while nonprofit groups have hired workers who don’t enjoy the job protections their unionized counterparts have. “The biggest complaint of workers is about the lack of job security and arbitrary discharge,” deJesus said during the June 13, meeting.

The next day, union organizers Ramon Marrero, Nicole Laing and Pavel Gerardo trained the volunteers for home visits. Yolanda Medina, education coordinator of DC 37’s parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and Assistant Director Larry Kelly of the DC 37 Education Dept., discussed workers’ expectations of unions and the advantages of union representation.

In recent weeks, the union has also held a press briefing about the Central Park Conservancy organizing campaign, established a Friends of NYC Parks Workers Organizing Committee, obtained pledges of support from 28 members of the City Council and held a breakfast meeting to inform clergy about the union’s organizing efforts.