Razzle Dazzle
DC 37: Sleepwalking Giant

By RICHARD STEIER

District Council 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts last week displayed her talents for political infighting and avenging past slights when her recently-gained control of the union's executive board allowed her to bounce antagonists who had been trustees of its $250 million welfare fund.

Unfortunately for those she represents, those strengths have not transferred well to the larger political arena, where DC 37's influence on both city government and legislation in Albany is a shadow of what it was a couple of decades ago.

Ms. Roberts, in no small measure thanks to her endorsement of his re-election, can get Mayor Bloomberg on the phone, and she was able to reach a solid wage contract settlement last summer. But the lack of clout DC 37 wields when it comes to the rest of government has been dramatized by its failure to gain City Council approval of what she had hailed as a key breakthrough under that contract: an easing of residency standards that would have given her members the same options as are enjoyed by uniformed workers.

Department of Political Inaction?

The Chief-Leader/Michael O'Kane ACCESS WITHOUT MUCH CLOUT: A day after Governor Spitzer was the target of a massive protest over his proposed health-care cuts led by the union representing private hospital workers, District Council 37 officials led by Treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin praised his budget plan at Elmhurst Hospital.  But while the union has friendly relations with both the Governor and the Mayor, critics say that major flaws in its political action operation have hamstrung DC 37's ability to get legislation approved.

Union critics say Ms. Roberts and her most-prominent ally, Local 372 President Veronica Montgomery-Costa, have given short shrift to the union's political action department, apparently believing that DC 37's reputation and their own contacts are enough to sway City Council Members and the powers in Albany. And so the political action department, which in the past was one of DC 37's strongholds, is headed by Wanda Williams, whom union veterans describe as someone whose prime qualification for the job is her unstinting loyalty to Ms. Roberts.

"We have no political action department," is how one official describes the situation.

A more graphic and searing characterization of the unit was provided in a most unusual exit memo by its associate director earlier this month, shortly after she was fired by Ms. Williams just nine weeks into her job. A copy of the memo found its way to this newspaper; when the former associate director was contacted to elicit additional information, she declined to comment and asked that her name not be used because she was fearful that it could hurt her chances of finding another job.

Suffice it to say that she is a longtime activist on municipal issues whose expertise in a couple of key areas made her a logical choice when Ms. Williams hired her as her second-in-command. But her memo, which apparently was also sent to Ms. Roberts, asserts that the department has been stymied by Ms. Williams's lack of leadership skills and directives from higher up that suggest that Ms. Roberts was reluctant to confront the Mayor about the NYPD's lack of compliance with a court ruling that could lead to the civilianizing of thousands of jobs now performed by uniformed cops.

"My overall perception of PAL [the political action and legislation department] is of an operation where a seemingly endless series of separate, discrete and sometimes frenetic activities occur, few of which relate even collaterally to 'political action' as that term is generally understood," the memo stated. "PAL is the most unreasoningly rigid, arbitrary, fragmented, demoralized, inefficient and worker-indifferent (if not actively hostile) work environment I've ever seen or worked in."

She cited situations in which staffers were routinely given last-minute weekend assignments, and a case in which Ms. Williams brought internal disciplinary proceedings against two staffers who had worked on four consecutive weekends when they were unavailable to work a fifth.

'Demoralized Staff'

"What appears to matter above all is that staff be where they are told to be, when they are told to be there, rather than what - if anything - they accomplish while there. A fractured, demoralized, passively-resistant staff that works at their bare minimum levels may yield obedience, but it is hardly a formula for organizational success."

The former associate director stated in the memo that Ms. Williams had been essentially clueless about how to achieve some of the department's key goals, from passage of a Council bill easing residency standards to prompting better compliance by the NYPD with the arbitration ruling - upheld in court on appeal - requiring greater civilianization.

At one point, the memo said, the associate director met with staff from Local 1549, which represents most of those who would be given the desk jobs now held by uniformed officers under civilianization, and received "a good deal of detailed information about how the NYPD was failing to implement both the arbitration order and the Agreement" reached with the Bloomberg administration after the September 2004 ruling withstood the court challenge.

When that information was conveyed to Ms. Williams, the memo stated, "you said you have to check with 'upstairs.' When I later asked about the results, in essence you told me to back off, and not be involved beyond offering some narrow technical assistance if requested."

Police Commissioners have resisted civilianizing for the past three decades. The initiative, first prompted by the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, has long been championed by budget watchdogs who point to the huge savings when employing civilians who receive lesser salaries and pensions than uniformed cops. Mayor Koch's first Police Commissioner, Robert McGuire, 25 years ago took issue with the notion, however, that a lower-paid civilian would have the intelligence, never mind the familiarity with police operations, to be an adequate substitute for a uniformed officer.

Less-Noble Motives?

DC 37 has long argued, however, that more than a few of the desk jobs at issue serve as a form of patronage for top commanders to dole out to well-connected cops looking for police perks without having to risk life and limb for them.

In May 2005, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that the NYPD had identified 700 jobs that could be civilianized. (Inquiries to both the Bloomberg administration and DC 37 - which had argued in the arbitration case that as many as 3,500 positions held by uniformed officers could be handled by civilians - about how many have actually been civilianized brought no response, however). And in September of that year, when he visited the union as a prelude to receiving its endorsement, Mr. Bloomberg, according to the DC 37 newspaper, the Public Employee Press, stated that getting the NYPD to civilianize was "like pulling teeth."

Unduly Deferential

That he would characterize it that way was an acknowledgment of the clout Mr. Kelly exercises with the Mayor. And so for DC 37 to press hard on that issue would mean asking Mr. Bloomberg to remind the Police Commissioner that they are not equals in the administration and that the union has a court ruling on its side.

The Mayor is known to refer to Ms. Roberts as "a nice woman." It is unlikely he would use such a description to sum up Randi Weingarten, but then, the United Federation of Teachers President would be unlikely to tell her political action operation not to push an initiative that might require asking Mr. Bloomberg to step on Joel Klein's shoes.

Instead, DC 37 has settled for City Hall largesse that does not discomfort Mr. Bloomberg, such as a program giving housing preference and mortgage aid to union members that was spurred because the Department of Housing Preservation and Development was having trouble attracting applicants from the general public. It's a worthwhile program that has allowed more than 1,200 DC 37 members to obtain their own homes, but hardly an exemplar of union power and influence.

What Ms. Roberts seemed to view last summer as a companion piece - the easing of residency requirements for her rank and file - has instead turned into an illustration of how much it is lacking in those areas.

Possible Without Bill?

There are those who wonder why it was necessary to get that change through legislation, inasmuch as Mayor Koch had re-imposed a residency requirement for civilian employees merely by issuing an Executive Order.

Several key Council Members have asserted that the easing of residency requirements could cost their constituents jobs, arguing that letting DC 37 members live in neighboring counties would also permit those already residing in the suburbs to compete for city jobs.

But while it's true that there are many more clerical and parks jobs here than in, say, Suffolk County, neither union nor city officials expect suburban residents to be applying for them with the same zeal that they seek Police Officer and Firefighter positions. The NYPD and FDNY have auras that appeal to those outside the city, but there is not much glamour to be found in working as an Accountant in the Department of Finance or an Office Associate at the Human Resources Administration.

One longtime DC 37 official lamented, "Wanda and Lillian are incapable of articulating why they're wrong," referring to the Council Members' fears about the side-effects of relaxing the residency requirement.

Political Debt Ignored

Adding to the frustration about a stalemate that led one Council Member to privately pronounce the bill "dead in the water" last week, according to the union official, is that "three-quarters of the people opposing this would not be in office if it weren't for DC 37."

Most of those Council Members, however, got their jobs prior to Ms. Roberts's tenure, during the 2001 elections when DC 37 was still under the administratorship that had been imposed three years earlier by its international union in response to a major corruption scandal. The key players in DC 37's political operation then - Eliot Seide, Mike Keogh and Diane D'Alessandro - have all moved on, and the falloff has been steep.

When it became clear that enough Council Members opposed the residency bill in its current form to doom its chances, DC 37 threatened to withhold support from them in their future political campaigns. This reportedly prompted an angry meeting last week involving union officials and members of the Council's Black and Latino Caucus.

But the continued willingness of those elected officials to defy the largest municipal employee union is telling. Though they may be term-limited, most of the affected Council Members could run for other offices, and they clearly don't believe DC 37 can be a difference-maker for or against them.

Can't Turn Out Troops

While campaign cash and the ability to cite a union's support in a candidate's election flyers are always appreciated, the primary value of a DC 37 endorsement in the past was the number of volunteers it could provide for getting out the vote and its ability to motivate its own members to vote for particular candidates. DC 37 no longer has a reputation for doing either of those things, prompting one official to remark, "It's a little hard to put boots on the ground when you don't have an operation that's properly staffed."

The recently discharged associate director of political action said in the memo to Ms. Williams that the union had missed an opportunity to make something positive of its futile efforts on behalf of two candidates in special elections for City Council seats last month - Jesse Hamilton (a member of Local 1757) in Brooklyn and Emanuele Innamorato in Staten Island. She said there was no discussion with staff about how to improve on its efforts in the future or expand its political activities.

But the former associate director in making those comments was assuming that DC 37 wanted to be the same kind of political powerhouse as the UFT or its private-sector counterpart, Local 1199 of the Service Employees' International Union. Doing so would require engaging the union's membership, and there's no reason to believe Ms. Roberts and some of her closest allies want to do that.

Start with the fact that 17 percent of DC 37's dues-payers are not actually union members. This is less of a conscious choice by those city employees than it is a calculated decision by DC 37 officials not to enroll them.

Under the agency shop law governing public employees, those who do not join a union are nonetheless required to pay the equivalent of dues. Except for diehards making statements based on political principle, that takes away any incentive for employees not to join DC 37.

On the other hand, some DC 37 leaders clearly believe that not working diligently to sign up everyone in their bargaining unit has political value, since those who don't become members can't participate in local elections. The clearest case of how this situation was exploited occurred in Local 768, where incumbent President Darryl Ramsey, a Roberts ally, recently retained office by just two votes after eight ballots - all cast by employees working in the same job title and the same agency as his challenger - were disqualified because they were deemed to come from agency fee-payers who were not union members.

Ms. Montgomery-Costa has eschewed the ballot thievery of some of the old DC 37 officials who were swept out of office and into jail during the corruption scandal a decade ago, but she has found an alternative, legal way of disenfranchising her members. She holds union elections for just a four-hour period at a single location - DC 37's Barclay St. headquarters - despite the fact that her members work in schools throughout the five boroughs.

Winning With 2 Percent

This has suppressed voter turnout to such an extent that Ms. Montgomery-Costa has twice won re-election while averaging just 500 votes from a membership of about 24,000. Does anybody imagine that she wants an activist, engaged electorate that gets in the habit of visiting the union's headquarters to help in general election campaigns?

Ms. Roberts herself has twice been re-elected with even fewer votes - in her case the weighted ballots cast by DC 37 delegates. The first time she sought re-election in 2004, she stated during the campaign that she favored changing the longtime DC 37 system so as to allow union members to directly choose their leaders.

When the bid for direct elections - which was first rejected by delegates during the administratorship - resurfaced 18 months after her narrow win over Charles Ensley, Ms. Roberts was suddenly opposed to it. She said at the time that she was merely abiding by the recommendation of a union committee, but one member of that committee said that the majority on the panel had shifted positions after pressure from some of Ms. Roberts's allies. When the issue came before the delegates in the fall of 2005, those from locals whose presidents support Ms. Roberts voted heavily against making the process more democratic.

The discouragement of member participation in union politics helps explain why they are not nearly as involved in the union's outside political activities as they were in the 1970s and 1980s. There has also been a narrowing of DC 37's focus in comparison with that era.

A Broader Perspective

When Victor Gotbaum ran DC 37, the union involved itself in issues that went beyond members' working lives, as he and his staff aligned themselves with other pro-labor or liberal groups and issues. In doing so, he sometimes antagonized the leaders of other unions who were more conservative politically; it was the prime reason that when Mr. Gotbaum retired from DC 37 20 years ago and sought to become president of the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council, he found little private-sector support despite the fact that his opponent, Tom Van Arsdale, lacked both his dynamism and his clout.

Ms. Roberts, aside from pressing the Mayor on housing issues, has almost never involved herself in issues that don't strictly pertain to union business: The anger she has stirred among other labor leaders is primarily due to the impact that her mediocre contract deal three years ago had on their own bargaining with the Bloomberg administration.

The former associate director of political action in her memo to Ms. Williams noted that in preparation for her meeting with the Legislature's Black and Latino Caucus, she had given her a five-page overview of Governor Spitzer's budget proposal that focused on areas that potentially affected DC 37. Those included, she noted, Medicaid and other shifts and cuts in health funding; the elimination of unrestricted state aid to the city; what she viewed as progressive tax changes affecting business - in contrast, she said, to the business-tax cuts sought by the Mayor; property-tax cuts that she considered regressive because they offered the greatest benefit to those who least needed them; and education funding.

The only feedback she got from Ms. Williams, she stated in the memo, was an acknowledgement that she had read the overview.

'Zero Presence in Albany'

But that, too, one longtime union official said, was consistent with Ms. Roberts's lack of involvement in Albany matters. "They have zero presence" in the state capital, the official said. Ms. Montgomery-Costa, who before becoming president of Local 372 had been its Albany lobbyist, has tried to orchestrate union activity by phone, using some of her old contacts, according to this official, but without much success.

Local 372 has perennially sought approval of a bill to help its members who work in the schools during the summers by providing funding for air-conditioning in those school cafeterias that don't have it. The bill was routinely vetoed by Governor Pataki, but DC 37 would annually list the measure among its Albany victories because it had passed both houses of the Legislature.

Yet what difference does that make to those running DC 37? Ms. Roberts easily won re-election two months ago despite a five-year record that doesn't have much on the plus side beyond the most-recent wage contract and the housing assistance program. Her supporters were elected to every executive board position chosen by the delegates; the one spot retained by the Ensley faction of the union goes automatically to Local 371 because it represents at least five percent of DC 37's membership.

AFSCME Complacency

In theory, this should be of concern to DC 37's international union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. As its flagship district council and the one based in the media and union capital of the nation, DC 37's image figures to have a bearing on AFSCME in its efforts to expand its membership throughout the country and in electing pro-labor officials to top government positions.

But AFSCME President Gerry McEntee enjoys the continued political support of Ms. Roberts and her allies, and the international union has reciprocated with some judicial panel rulings that boggle credulity. Those include one last year by Judicial Panel Chairman John Seferian that exonerated Ms. Roberts of guilt for her attempt to take over the DC 37 welfare fund - the opposite conclusion that a Federal judge in Manhattan had reached. Mr. Seferian said he believed that the judge would have ruled differently if she had seen a particular memo Ms. Roberts had issued during the controversy; what made this assessment so astonishing was that the judge had cited that very memo as proof that Ms. Roberts realized that she had overstepped her bounds.

This gave Ms. Roberts an in-house victory after she couldn't win a legal one in the court system. The changing of the guard at the executive board gave her a more substantive win, allowing her to legally seize control of the welfare fund.

This is not necessarily good news for DC 37's 121,000 members and 50,000 retirees, however. The battle three years ago between Ms. Roberts and former executive board members who were aligned with her main political foe, Mr. Ensley, was triggered by their removal of four of her seven appointees to the welfare fund.

Shied From Tough Issue

They took that step because the trustees, facing a rapidly rising deficit caused by the soaring price of prescription drugs, decided to increase member co-pays only enough to cover about a third of the shortfall. The Ensley forces believed that Ms. Roberts did not want an increase in co-pays large enough to stabilize the fund because she feared a backlash from members already upset about the lackluster contract deal she had negotiated a month earlier with the Bloomberg administration.

So Mr. Ensley's supporters took over the welfare fund, with seven of them appointed to trustee positions, and took the actions needed to deal with the deficit. When all but one of them was removed last week, they walked away from a fund that now has a surplus.

The question that should trouble union members is, what happens if a new problem crops up, the best solution is a potentially unpopular one, and Ms. Roberts decides not to risk the political fallout of acting responsibly?

Nine years ago, spurred by rampant corruption, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office stepped in, bringing in its wake the international union to salvage a sinking ship and tow it back to respectability. A mark of DC 37's slide since then is that unless similar corruption surfaces, there may be no rescue in sight for a vessel that is sailing aimlessly toward the shores of irrelevance.

 

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