Clash Over OST Program
Day-Care Group: City Union-Busting

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

The city's day-care union and several elected officials charged last week that Mayor Bloomberg's re-organization of child-care services has resulted in illegal union-busting.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang LETITIA JAMES: Suspicious series of events.

District Council 1707 officials filed a civil suit in an effort to force the city to comply with a 13-month-old arbitration ruling that ordered it to abide by the union's contract for all employees working inside day-care centers funded by the Administration for Children's Services.

Caught in the Switch

There are currently about 510 workers in unionized ACS day-care centers whose union contract is not recognized by the city because their work was switched from ACS's jurisdiction to the Department of Youth and Community Development.

The union and some City Council members also say that many of the 13 unionized day-care centers in Brooklyn that ACS has targeted as under-enrolled risk being shut down because DYCD's new program, called Out of School Time, has pulled elementary school-age children out of the centers. ACS officials say there are no plans to close the 13 centers.

LEWIS FIDLER: DYCD passing the buck.

Out of School Time (OST) consists of 550 programs citywide, most of which are non-union, that provide child care and after-school care for more than 63,000 children. Mayor Bloomberg is proposing $32 million in additional funds next year to expand the initiative, which is the largest of its kind in the country.

About 205 of the OST programs, which are run by non-profits, serve elementary school-age children, the population that DC 1707 members generally care for. The union estimates that there are thousands of non-union OST workers taking care of young children.

Makes Her Wonder

"I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories," said Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James at a March 8 Youth Services hearing, "but when I see this mass transfer of programs to DYCD and all this infusion of money into not-for-profits, and I see that ACS is getting out of the business of child-care centers, I have to ask whether or not this is nothing more than an attempt to engage in union-busting."

A spokeswoman for Mayor Bloomberg denied the charges. "The city has not engaged in union busting," Dawn Walker wrote in an e-mail. "This is not the policy of the Bloomberg Administration. The OST model is operating well and will continue as designed."

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood-James 'WE'LL STOP THE MAYOR'S PRIVATIZING': DC 1707 Executive Director Raglan George and dozens of day-care workers demanded at a March 8 press conference that the city obey an arbitration ruling that all workers in Administration for Children's Services-funded day-care centers are covered by DC 1707's contract.

OST programs are run by about 200 different community-based non-profit organizations and are housed in various facilities, including community centers, public schools, libraries and Parks buildings. DYCD officials said that they are not part of any collective-bargaining agreements because the OST employees are not city workers.

"It's not appropriate for us to be involved," DYCD Commissioner Jeanne B. Mullgrav said at the hearing, adding that the non-profit groups had the responsibility for hiring, firing and other work-force-related decisions.

Several Council Members did not seem convinced.

'Not Your Problem?'

"So your position is, you fund agencies and the agencies deal with the union; you provide funding whether it's a union locale or not, then, so, it's kind of like, not your problem?" asked Committee Chair Lewis Fidler.

Deputy Commissioner Bill Chong responded that the agencies went through a competitive-bidding process for the OST contracts. "Every agency had the opportunity to factor in their real costs in the competition," he said. "So those who chose to compete for OST had to live with the dollars requested, they couldn't say to us we needed this amount and then afterwards say, 'Oh, we needed more''' to pay for a union contract.

But the union, and several non-profit agencies, pointed out that the community organizations had little wiggle room when it came to staff costs because the per-child payments were set substantially lower than the amount received by unionized ACS centers.

"It is possible that neither DYCD nor the centers, in agreeing to have a DYCD contract at $2,800 for full-time year-round elementary school-age children, considered that this would be in violation of the union contract," said Sandy Socolar, senior policy analyst at DC 1707, "but the fact that they didn't take this into consideration does not absolve them of fulfilling the terms of the contract."

DYCD: Paying Right Rates

DYCD officials say their payment rates are sufficient. "DYCD consulted with providers from the non-profit sector and national price models to establish the price-per-participant rates," spokesman Ryan Dodge wrote in an e-mail. "Additionally, OST incorporates public resources from Department of Education Schools, NYC Housing Authority Facilities and NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Community Centers to assist providers in operating programs at manageable costs."

Regardless of payment levels, the February 2006 arbitration ruling stated that although the child-care programs are now funded by DYCD rather than ACS, that did not permit the centers or the city to refuse to comply with a DC 1707 contract, at least with regard to OST workers working inside ACS centers.

Union officials noted that unionized ACS workers, like OST workers, also are not technically city workers. The Daycare Council, made up of the non-profit day-care center operators, bargains with the union, but can only sign contracts based upon what the city has budgeted for day-care funding. The union proposed that a similar set-up be put in place for OST workers, but officials said they have yet to receive a response to their proposal.

Proposal 'Not Viable'

City officials disputed that claim. "There have been several meetings between city officials and DC 1707 to try to find a solution," said Ms. Walker. "At a meeting just this past December between City Hall officials, [Executive Director] Raglan George and [Assistant to Mr. George] Neil Tepel of DC 1707, they were informed that the recommendations they submitted had been reviewed but were not viable."

Meanwhile, the arbitration ruling only covers the 600 workers inside ACS centers. There are thousands of OST employees providing day care and after-school care throughout the city. The union says it will try to organize those workers as well, but it needs the guarantee of adequate city funding.

"It doesn't make any sense for us to organize workers if the city hasn't budgeted enough money to give them their benefits and wages," said G.L. Tyler, DC 1707's political action director. "We have to force the city to fund them properly.

Hopefully we're going to have that done, but if not, we'll just have to organize the workers the way they are."

Mr. Tyler would not say whether an organizing drive had officially begun, but said that "things are happening" with regard to the effort.

Harmful to Morale

Some day-care workers say it is demoralizing to have non-union workers employed inside the centers.

"We're trying to get them to become union members," said Lucille Fleming, a shop steward who has been an Assistant Teacher at the under-enrolled Round Table Child Care Center in Brooklyn for 18 years. "They just came aboard this year, and most of them are worried about signing up with the union because they think the center might be closing."

St. John's Day Care Center in Brooklyn lost its after-school program last year, and the union workers who staffed it, due to the switch to OST, according to St. John's staff members. St. John's lost its lease and is now housed in the Haitian-American Day Care Center in Crown Heights, which also has an OST program and is considered under-enrolled.

"We lost some of our best Teachers," said Catherine Copney, who has been an Assistant Teacher at St. John's for 15 years. "They say we're under-enrolled, but we're fully enrolled for 3-year-olds. We get more 3-year-olds than we do 5-year-olds because they're opening up the public schools. There is a major need for 2- and 3-year-olds."

'We'll Go After the City'

Many elementary school-age OST programs are housed in neighborhood public schools. Six of the 13 day-care centers that ACS says are under-enrolled have OST programs operating inside their walls.

Union officials say they will continue to press their case.

"We are going to systematically go after the city to support what the arbitrator had awarded us," said Mr. George at a press conference that drew dozens of day-care workers and parents to the steps of City Hall March 8. "We are here to say to the city that they can't dismantle child care and privatize child care. This is what this Mayor is doing, and we want to it to stop."