Public Employee Press

Union fightback saves hundreds of jobs

Budget restores $400 million, but Bloomberg still plans 1,100 layoffs.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, accompanied by Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido, testifi es before the City Council on the budget.

DC 37's aggressive fight-back campaign stopped hundreds of layoffs and won restorations of $395 million in the new city budget adopted June 29.

But the $63 billion budget for the year that began July 1 still calls for 1,100 layoffs and eliminates another 4,200 positions through attrition.

"We are disappointed about the human costs of the service cuts, downsizing and wasteful spending on contractors that remain," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, "but the budget does restore many cuts that deeply concerned us."

Street heat

The City Council approved the budget 48-1 two weeks after 30,000 union members protested Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposed fiscal plan, which would have laid
off 6,000 workers and eliminated 5,000 jobs through attrition.

The fightback also included lobbying at the City Council, letter writing and demonstrations by library, parks, social service and health-care workers.

The new budget restored funds to cancel or reduce layoffs and cutbacks in libraries, cultural institutions, school nursing, swimming pools and pest control, and it converted
dozens of consultant positions to jobs for city employees.

"The City Council exercised their budget power under the City Charter to protect many of our union workers," said Roberts, "and we will be watching closely to make sure the agencies use the money for this purpose."

As PEP went to press, the union was studying the budget's impact on members' jobs, pressing management to recall workers laid off already in anticipation of budget cuts, find
alternatives to layoffs and protect targeted employees' contractual and civil service rights, said Evelyn Seinfeld, acting director of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept.

At budget hearings, the union called for a 15 percent cut in spending on outside contractors. The estimated savings would have been enough to prevent all the layoffs in Bloomberg's proposed budget, according to DC 37 Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido.

While the blanket cutback of contracting out was not adopted, the budget funds the conversion of 61 consultant spots in the CityTime payroll project to positions for city employees, and DC 37's pressure for the cut drew attention to the vast waste in contract spending.

"There's a big sense that not all the contracts out there are entirely necessary," Comptroller John Liu said in a July 4 Daily News article, which noted that the Dept. of Finance will save $5.9 million by replacing 29 consultants with full-time city computer workers.

Unionists and supporters at the June 16 "Save Our City" rally. The demonstration was part of the union's fi ghtback campaign on the mayor's austere proposed budget that included lobbying at the City Council, letter writing and protests by library, parks, social service and health-care workers.

Important restorations

Major restorations include:

. $61.5 million for the three library systems, which had expected up to 1,300 layoffs. Layoffs remain possible but would be far below that worst-case scenario.

. $17.4 million at DC 37-staffed cultural institutions.

. $3.1 million to for School Nurse coverage. Bloomberg would have eliminated nurses at schools with under 300 students despite a legal requirement for staffing at those schools.

. $5.9 million at the Administration for Children's Services. The funding cancels a plan to eliminate 202 child protective positions through attrition and should save 47 Child Welfare Specialists from layoffs.

. $1.4 million for the Parks Dept. will keep the swimming season from being cut by two weeks and save four pools from being closed this summer.

. At the Health Dept., the City Council put back $1 million out of a $1.5 million cut in funding for pest control workers. The union is fighting for callbacks of Local 768 members who were laid off before the budget vote.

The $17.4 million restoration at 15 cultural institutions is substantial but still leaves millions of dollars in funding cuts. Bloomberg's proposed budget called for 284 layoffs at the institutions.

"Thanks to the restorations, any downsizing should certainly be less severe than anticipated," said Mike Riggio, director of the DC 37 White Collar Division. "We are exploring alternatives and working with the institutions to minimize the impact of the cuts."

The new budget failed to address much of the union's concern about the Dept. of Education.

The DOE budget had a $493 million hole as PEP went to press because Gov. David Paterson and Albany legislators had failed to agree on how much school aid the city will get. The union is pressing the state to make up for the loss of federal grants whose expiration caused the layoff of 119 substance abuse counselors.