Slap Time-Scanners
Parks Staffers: Palm This

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

Chanting "Olmsted and Vaux Didn't Punch Time Clocks," about 100 Parks Department Architects, Designers and Engineers rallied outside the agency's headquarters in Central Park Feb. 21 to protest the planned use of hand-print technology to track work hours.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang EXCELLENT DESIGNS, NOT ASSEMBLY LINES: Members of Local 375 of District Council 37 believe that the planned use of hand-print scanners by the Parks Department to track their time-keeping is demeaning. 'This means more to me than a nine-to-five job," said Landscape Architect Imelda Bernstein, 'and I don't want management to treat it like a nine-to-five job.'

The city employees didn't object to the new computerized time-keeping system, known as CityTime, which replaces paper time sheets with electronic ones. Their anger was aimed at the machines that would record their biometric information and the future possibility that their movements could be tracked using RFID chips in city-issued cell phones.

'More Than 9-to-5 Job'

"This means more to me than a nine-to-five job," said Imelda Bernstein, a Landscape Architect, "and I don't want management to treat it like a nine-to-five job."

Local 375 Civil Service Technical Guild officials, who represent the protesting workers, said that out of 6,000 to 7,000 Parks employees, about 80 percent, or more than 5,000, could be affected. All managers and civil service employees who make more than $68,000 will be exempt. 

Ms. Bernstein, who works at the Olmsted Center in Flushing, Queens, said she had worked 70-hour weeks for the past month to finish work on the Astoria Skate Park. "No one forced me to," she said. "I knew what it was going to take to get the job done."

Local 375 Vice President Jon Forster noted that the contract for CityTime had soared from its original price tag of $48 million to more than $410 million. 

"This is about control," said Local 375 President Claude Fort. "This system has the potential to take their privacy away. There are better things they can do for the community with that kind of money."

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang COMPUTERIZE, DON'T BIOMETRIC-IZE: Local 375 Civil Service Technical Guild President Claude Fort has no objection to the use of computerized timesheets, but wants the Parks Department to drop its plan to force workers to clock in using palm-scanners. 'Our people like the jobs they do,' he said. 'They give extra time to their jobs. The minute-by-minute tracking is putting down morale.'

Mr. Forster also argued that labor should take on the fight as part of a larger one facing workers in the U.S. "This is linked to a broader societal issue of what is acceptable in terms of surveillance technology," he said. "Knowing where all the ambulances are in the city is one thing, but tracking human beings with RFID chips is another extreme."

Officials at the Office of Payroll Administration, who are in charge of the new time-keeping system, have argued that the system will be more efficient and accurate and ensure that "city workers are paid for the hours they work."

But union officials disagreed and argued that while computerizing the system made sense, the scanning process made timekeeping more rigid and less accurate.

Can't Make Up Time

For example, if workers arrive at 9:15 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., they cannot compensate by working until 5:15 p.m. since work after 5 p.m. is considered overtime and must be officially pre-approved. If it is not approved, their pay is docked for the missing 15 minutes. In addition, if they arrive at 9:08 a.m., the system records their arrival time as 9:15 a.m.

The Parks designers on the lively picket, with signs exclaiming "No-Scan-Do!" and "Excellent Designs, Not Assembly Lines," marched from 64th St. and 5th Ave. into Central Park and said they hoped Parks would hear them, after a meeting between the two sides failed to make progress.

The union is planning another protest March 11 in front of the Office of the Medical Examiner, which is also planning to install the scanners, affecting Forensic Criminologists, among others.

Emmanuel Thingue, a Landscape Architect III who has worked at Parks for 17 years, said that he saw the new system as a sign of lack of trust in the city's employees.

"This Big Brother in society, that's something I'm totally against," he said. "The more we accept our rights being taken away, the more they will take."