Public Employee Press: PEP Talk
Union leaders speak out at City Council hearing
Consultants are costly
By MIKE LEE
At a January NYC Council hearing, DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and several union presidents criticized contracting out of jobs to consultants while essential public workers have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Contracts, chaired by Council Member Ben Kallos, was on the City’s compliance with Local Law 63 that requires a cost-benefit analysis of worker displacement in soliciting contractors. It also requires the Mayor’s office to publish details of future contracting of city agencies for the upcoming fiscal year in “certain categories of procurement.”
Garrido strongly spoke out about how the City is using the law in practice.
“The companies are charging exorbitant rates in providing a worker. In many instances, we say if you like these workers, hire them to provide benefits and a pension. But they found out many companies have a trick that prohibits the City from hiring their employees without a penalty,” Garrido said.
“In our experience, we found computer consultants were costing the City an average of $250,000 to work at help desk level. So even with including the health benefits and pensions of City workers, this is costing the City more,” Garrido said. “If we don’t have money to hire public workers, then why do we have money to hire consultants — and pay them twice as much?”
DC 37 local presidents shared their experiences with non-union consultants. NYC Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627 President Laura Morand told the Council many consultants come aboard and actually require training.
“My members are training these consultants. How is it that a consultant is hired if they don’t know how to do the job, or they have few qualifications, so my members have to turn around and train them to do the work,” Morand said.
Local 2627 represents Assistant System Analysts, Computer and Telecommunications specialists and associates, and other technology titles in more than 50 City agencies.
SSEU Local 371 President Anthony Wells said, “We have to look at the relationship that the City has with contractors. Clearly, all of our workers are doing better work and it’s unconscionable for the City to be talking about laying off workers when you have all these consultants at exorbitant cost doing work that can be done by our members.”
Local 983 President Joe Puleo agreed. “You never get the level of dedicated service from a consultant that you would get from a civil servant,” he said. “Our workers take exams and work hard in order to make the City a career, their gateway to the middle class.”
Taking up Morand’s point about the problems with background checks, Puelo told the Council, “All public employees have to go through a background check and are evaluated. How do you find out about contractors from a corporation who fires at will?”
DC 37 leaders are vehemently opposed to the City’s use of consultants in a time when the union is fighting against the possible layoffs of tens of thousands of essential workers.
