CWA 1180 - HRA Watch

HRA Watch

Tension in the Job Centers puts members at risk
JOS training turns a staff shortage into a staff crisis
September 2001

"The other day a client came up to me and said, 'I'm going to kick your ___,'" said Brenda Nelson. "I've had clients put their hands all up in my face and say they're going to do so and so to me."

"We get threats all the time," Alison Bryan said.

"Two or three times a day the police come here," explained Rosita Rojas.

Nelson, Bryan and Rojas are all 1180 members who work in HRA Job Centers. Work conditions for them and the 600 other PAAs working in the welfare centers have never been easy, but this summer they became alarmingly dangerous. That's because HRA management made an already difficult situation in the Job Centers impossible by sending workers for training for the new ill-advised Job Opportunity Specialist (JOS) title series without any regard for how the work would get done without the workers. What's worse, because workers are being trained before the centers are actually ready to switch over to the JOS set-up, the trained workers return to their centers without being able to function in either their old or their new titles. And so the problem of understaffing has gone from bad to insane. Clients don't get serviced. Workers are pushed to the edge. Tensions mount. In short, HRA has created an unsafe workplace.

Local 1180 has responded by letting management know that this situation is intolerable. First of all, the agency is in clear violation of the union contract's health and safety clause, which guarantees workers a safe work environment. The union has accordingly filed a grievance under article XIV, section G of the contract, and is demanding that the agency provide for the personal security of its workers. Local 1180 is also advising members that they have an absolute right to remove themselves from danger, and that they should immediately report unsafe conditions to their managers. City Council Members Stephen DiBrienza is prepared to call hearings on the issue.

The root of the security problem, of course, is inadequate staff. HRA staff has been cut in half since 1994. Now on top of that, management action on the JOS training has created a crisis situation by increasing backlogs and keeping workers from servicing clients. "When you go out on the floor, you see there are no workers there to service clients," explained Nelson, who works at the St. Nicholas Job Center in Harlem. Because of JOS training, she noted, "I'm down the five workers in my group." (Each group that an 1180 member supervises is supposed to have 10 workers; whenever there are less than 10 in a group, the client cases of the missing staff are covered by no one.) Pam Berthoud from the Melrose center had a similar story to tell. "They took all my staff," she said, "I've got three groups and one supervisor!"

At the Fordham Job Center, where Betty Black is the shop steward, the situation is the same. "With JOS training, now supervisors are doing triple loads," she exclaimed.

"No staff! That's the problem," Bryan said bluntly when asked what conditions were responsible for the high tensions. Bryan is the shop steward at Melrose.

Under the circumstances, clients have understandably become frustrated and desperate. "Someone is going to get hurt," warned Diane Murphy, also from Melrose. "You have these clients who have been waiting for months and they don't have food to put on the table."

In June, there were several very disturbing incidents that alarmed observers. In one center, four fights broke out among clients, and as a result 1180 members were essentially trapped in one corner of the room. In another center, on the very same day, a client attacked an 1180 member.

At the time, with the prospect of a long hot summer in the poorly air conditioned Job Centers stretching out ahead of them, 1180 members felt like they might be on the brink of full-scale rioting in the centers. Miraculously, things did not get worse. But they haven't exactly gotten better either, and the pressures 1180 members face are extreme. "They put you out on the firing line with no back up," said Nelson.

"The stress factor here is unbelievable here, it's insane," said Black.

"The Fire Department is constantly here because of overcrowding. People yell at us, they threaten us," said Amparo Suero from the Melrose Job Center.

"And that's every day!" added Berthoud.

In addition to being a bad idea to start with, the whole JOS scheme has thus made an already difficult situation worse. It has deprived the Job Centers of desperately needed staff. It has hurt clients. And it has put 1180 members' safety at risk. Add it all up and that's three more reasons to Just Say NO to JOS and to the madness which passes for management at HRA.

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