After-School Staff Discounted

Mayor Bloomberg more than once has spoken about the valuable work that the city's social service workers perform. It sometimes seems, however, that he doesn't place much value on that work in the form of salary and benefits.

A couple of years ago, when Mr. Bloomberg settled a long-delayed contract with the representative for many of the day-care workers, District Council 1707, it didn't include retroactive pay. There had been a long tradition of giving those employees settlements along the lines won by District Council 37, whose contracts always include retroactivity when they are settled past the expiration date. In that case, however, Mr. Bloomberg said the money originally in the budget that would have permitted retroactivity had been removed by his predecessor, and he wasn't inclined to make it up.

Earlier this month, a City Council hearing focused on the fact that most of the employees in the two-year-old Out of School Time program, which provides after-school services to children, are part-timers who are paid inferior wages to those working in day-care centers funded by the Administration for Children's Services. According to a report commissioned by the city, only 15 percent of them receive health benefits.

The reduced staff costs that result make the operational expenses for OST centers 30 to 40 percent cheaper than for ACS-funded day-care centers. But that difference also makes it more difficult for OST to attract qualified staff, with 52 percent of the program directors surveyed stating that they lacked the funds necessary to "provide quality programming."

The Department of Youth and Community Development, which coordinates the OST program, takes issue with that characterization, insisting that it is fulfilling its mandate. But a dispute persists over the OST employees who are using classrooms in 25 ACS-funded day-care centers, working on the same premises with ACS employees who receive better pay and benefits.

DC 1707 contends that those employees should be treated as members of its union and paid accordingly, and won an arbitration ruling to that effect last year. The city has not moved to comply, however.

This is peculiar given that the $3.9-billion budget surplus leaves it well within the city's means to abide by the ruling.

The city report on OST is generally positive. But it also suggests that a good program could be better merely by giving the OST workers the same status and salary as is afforded ACS staffers performing identical work.

So why is the Mayor resisting taking the steps to upgrade his own worthwhile program in an area that he has made a priority of his administration?