Unions Say DCAS Job Plan Takes Merit Out of System; Adds Non-Comp Exempt Titles
By ARI PAUL
The Chief-Leader, December 26, 2008

Union leaders Dec. 16 blasted the latest step in a Department of Citywide Administrative Services plan to reduce provisionals that creates a new Non-Competitive Class title and two titles outside the civil service system entirely, while the Bloomberg administration argued that the changes were necessary to find qualified applicants for specific job functions.

Unions Question Fairness

State legislation passed last year requires the city to devise a plan to reduce provisionals over the next five years. DCAS has proposed holding more civil service exams but moving more titles to the Non-Competitive Class, which the unions have argued would open up the system to corruption and favoritism.

In addition to creating 1,500 Confidential Strategy Planner titles throughout city agencies in the Non-Competitive Class, DCAS has proposed two exempt titles: 240 positions for Executive Program Specialist, a managerial title, whose occupants will administer policy goals in agencies, DCAS said, and 1,500 positions for Strategic Initiative Specialist, a sub-managerial title for those who will assess city programs and recommend changes.

"Due to the specialized experience and skill required for each position, it would not be possible to fill these positions through competitive examinations," DCAS Director of Classification and Compensation Sherry Schultz said in a memo last month. "Since work in the specific initiative or program will be accomplished in a finite duration, employees in these positions will serve a maximum of four years. If a Strategic Initiative Specialist decides that he/she wishes to continue working for the city beyond the project duration, he or she can take a civil service examination and be hired in a competitive civil service title."

But Louis G. Albano of the Civil Service Merit Council said that the proposals "provide no substance at all as to the duties that will be performed." This meant, he contended, that agency officials could "hire congenial friends and figure out the jobs once the friends are hired ... Providing new names for patronage jobs, allegedly to reduce the number of illegal provisionals serving as employees of New York City, is a transparent subterfuge."

During a DCAS hearing on the new changes, Fire and Transportation Department officials said that the new exempt titles would enable them to find workers for assignments that were too specific to quantify talent in the form of an eligible list. But union leaders countered that such a change ran contrary to Civil Service Law.

'Legalizes Illegal Behavior'

Arthur Cheliotes, president of Communication Workers of America Local 1180, said he distrusted DCAS's argument because the state legislation mandating the provisional reduction was prompted by the fact that the city had retained provisional workers well beyond the nine-month limit.

"This is a proposal to legalize illegal behavior," said Mr. Cheliotes, who was also speaking as the chairman of the Civil Service Committee of the Municipal Labor Committee. "Should these titles ever be approved, I can predict with a great degree of confidence that the limitations on the types of appointments and the four-year limits on an appointment will be enforced with the same consistency as the nine-month limit is for provisionals."

Mr. Cheliotes believed that placing positions outside the Competitive Class would lead to corruption. He invoked a recent $21-million settlement between current and former Department of Parks and Recreation workers and the city, in which the long-time civil servants — who were black and Latino — were passed over for promotion to managerial titles in favor of recent college graduates — who were nearly exclusively white — during the Giuliani administration by then-Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.

Mr. Cheliotes asked rhetorically if the duties of these new titles were currently performed by workers in the Competitive Class.

"Competitive-Class employees are performing these important duties as I testify, as they always must," he said, adding that he would be willing to work with DCAS to formulate a new plan to reduce provisionals and enable agencies to hire workers to perform specific job functions for short and long-term projects.

For Organization of Staff Analysts Chairman Robert Croghan, the DCAS proposal was an episode of déjà vu. He told DCAS officials that he organized Analysts more than 20 years ago against the wishes of then-Mayor Ed Koch, who believed that those jobs were confidential or managerial.

"There was nothing managerial about my job," he said in his testimony. "There was nothing confidential about my job. It was all a lie."

Mr. Croghan continued, "Now, with the proposal before us today, the Division of Personnel is suggesting we should do it all over again. The proposal is for 3,240 untested appointees to be denied any protection other than their bosses' favor. How neat. Three to four thousand such employees were given their jobs in the '70s and ungratefully, those Analysts founded a union and sued to force the city to give exams. In short, they forced the city to obey the law. Now the Division of Personnel wants to try again with a new group."

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