DHS Layoffs Target Lower-Paid Staff In Favor of Vendor

JOHN TALBUTT: City leaving workers hanging.

Proposed layoffs to Community Assistants in the Department of Homeless Services will lead to privatelycontracted employees making the minimum wage picking up their workloads, according to a union representative.

The Mayor's proposed budget for the next fiscal year includes 174 layoffs of Community Assistants in the DHS, which would completely eliminate the position from the agency. Community Assistants help to clean and maintain homeless shelters in the city.

Plan to Contract Out Work

John Talbutt, the executive assistant to District Council 37 Social Service Employees Union Local 371 President Faye Moore, said in a phone interview that a private firm called Wildcat, which hires people in the criminal justice system who are working while on parole or probation, would take over the work if the budget proposal was enacted.

Mr. Talbutt said that although the city had started some hiring through the company before 2000, it was in 2003, when 89 DHS Community Assistants were laid off, that the city signed multi-million dollar contracts with Wildcat. "We brought a grievance, saying they had to submit costeffectiveness studies to the union, but more importantly they had to go to the Comptroller and the City Council," he said in a phone interview. "They denied that they had increased Wildcat, so we got in touch with them, and the person there denied it too, although she might have been so far removed that she actually believed it."

Mr. Talbutt said that he hadn't spo- ken publicly about the grievance because it was in arbitration, and that he was hoping to resolve the process fairly that way. "But now they say they're going to lay off all of them," he said. "These workers have 21 years or more experience. Most of them are the head of a household, or the main breadwinner; they are a stabilizing force in their communities."

"In response to recent fiscal reductions, we have been loking at some cost-effective ways of re-engineering work done in the shelters and Central Office," said DHS Press Secretary Heather Janik. "We want to find the best approach and solution to achieve efficiency while still providing the best services to our clients."

Cites Workers' Plight

Mr. Talbutt said that he was stunned the city was targeting the Community Assistants in particular, given their experience in the job and the comparably low salaries they made—about $28,000 a year or $14 an hour on average. "Given the fact that the folks here have 21 years or more in, they would attrit out within a decade anyway," he said. "In Tier 4 you need to be 62 to retire, so they don't have any bridge, they're almost across the river, but [the city] just knocked the bridge out and left them there."

He also noted that they had slowly climbed the salary ladder over their years of service to the city. "It's part of the thing that New York once did so well. And the people who are replacing them are not being paid a living wage, are not going to wind up with a pension or health benefits, are not generally speaking the heads of households…it's really destabilizing," he said. "It's an experiment in social dysfunction. Our members do not deserve to be treated this shabby way."