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Sue Sanit Over Added Probation For New Hires; Question
Justification, Saying Quality Of Recruits is High
During the probationary period, the department has the ability to summarily fire a worker without an administrative disciplinary hearing or other preliminary steps that are provided to tenured civil servants. Cites NYPD, Correction Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty noted that the NYPD and city Correction Department each have 24-month probationary periods for new officers. "We are just following suit," said DSNY spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins. The USA countered that the probationary period for Firefighters is currently one year. "He said he just wants to watch us more," Mr. Nespoli said, referring to Mr. Doherty. The union president complained he wasn't informed of the switch before it was implemented. "He must have been working on it for six months; you'd think he'd have the decency to notify the union."
The suit noted that unlike for city cops, there has been no shortage of qualified candidates for Sanitation Worker jobs. A recruitment problem could possibly force the DSNY to hire candidates with questionable credentials, therefore pushing the agency to want more time to fully evaluate new hires. But there have already been more than 7,500 applicants for the latest Sanitation Worker filing period, with many more expected to apply. "All for a total of expected hiring of several hundred workers for each of four years," the suit said. Can Extend Probation The union also contended that the recently increased minimum age for new hires from 18 to 21 "should ameliorate any experience and education concerns that the DSNY may have." The DSNY also has the ability to extend the probationary period for any individual worker for an additional six months, the suit pointed out. Georgia Pestana, the head of the city Law Department's Labor and Law Employment Division, said, "We have not been formally served with the legal papers yet, but we will evaluate them thoroughly." An Office of Labor Relations official noted that other unions have contested similar extensions in court, to no avail. The union's court brief cited how the NYPD extended its probationary period from 18 months to two years in 1998. That move was upheld by the courts, which ruled that the extension was rationally connected to the NYPD's goal of a more-thorough evaluation of new cops' fitness for duty. The extension was based on a report by the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Police Management Personnel Policy, which found that a longer probationary period would help prevent the recurrence of alleged police misconduct. But in the case of new Sanitation Workers, "Commissioner Doherty's attempt to support the extension falls flat," the suit argued. In addition, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services "apparently engaged in no meaningful investigation of the reasons for and implications of an extension," the suit said. Comparing Sanitation Workers to cops makes no sense, the complaint added. Sanitation Workers must complete two weeks of training, while new cops have to finish six months of instruction, the court brief noted. The DSNY's extension is "merely an attempt to provide more time in which Sanitation Workers may be summarily dismissed without a hearing and for purely subjective reasons unrelated to job function," the suit stated. "Such terminated workers would have no adequate or viable recourse in the courts."
The DSNY, however, maintained the extension was needed.
"Sanitation is a quasi-military organization," Ms. Dawkins said.
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