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DC 37 White Papers identify waste
DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, at City Hall on Feb. 25, discusses the
union’s new white paper, which identifies 10 instances in which the city
could save nearly $130 million by replacing contracted workers with civil servants.
From left, City Council member Letitia James, Roberts, and District Council 37’s
Treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin, Secretary Cliff Koppelman and Associate Director Oliver
Gray. Read
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More DC 37
examination of NYC's contracting out of public services found that the city wastes
$9 billion in taxpayer dollars on more than 18,000 contracts -when city workers
could perform the same jobs for less and with more accountability.
- Sept. 2012 PEP: Fightback grows against Bloomberg scheme - Local 1455 members will bring in up to $125 million in net revenue this year from the city's parking meters, yet Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is still aiming to farm out their jobs to the private sector. Union leaders, City Council members and City Comptroller John Liu are determined to stop the mayor's latest contracting-out scheme.
- July-Aug. 2012 PEP: NYC Congress members investigate Bloomberg's contracting - The 11 Democratic members of the city's congressional delegation have sounded the alarm about the lack of accountability and excessive costs of the Bloomberg administration's contracting out, much of it using federal funds.
- July-Aug. 2012 PEP: Liu audit reveals 911 debacle and the $192 cockroach: Bloomberg's biggest budget buster
- New York City Comptroller John C. Liu held a press conference May 30, 2012, to review his second audit of the Emergency Communications Transformation Program, the botched effort to streamline and upgrade the city's 911 call system.
- June 2012 PEP: Contracting in saves union jobs, city money - Saving DC 37 members' jobs and the city's money, Traffic Employees Local 1455 and the Dept. of Transportation have initiated a pilot program in Queens to contract in street sign production and installation.
- June 2012 PEP: Contracting in for safe water - A wall-to-wall union workforce will be running the world's largest ultraviolet light plant for disinfecting water when it starts operating in August 2012. As late as spring 2012, the city Dept. of Environmental Protection was moving ahead with a plan to let a private contractor run the plant, which will treat all the water flowing into New York City.
- April 2012 PEP: Contractor to pay city $1/2 billion in CityTime fraud - The lead contractor of the troubled CityTime automated payroll project has agreed to pay the city $500 million to avoid federal criminal charges. DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts called on the city to use the settlement money to bring back laid-off workers and to help fund a new economic agreement for members.
- April 2012 PEP: ringing in the bucks: The city listens to the union and collects $1/4 billion in extra revenue. - The city is now bringing in more than $¼ billion a year in additional revenue - without increasing taxes - by implementing good government proposals the union has pushed for.
- March 2012 PEP: New Local Law 35: Weapon against contracting out - DC 37 plans to use a newly amended law to fight outside contracts that threaten members' jobs and waste taxpayers' dollars. The Outsourcing Accountability Act (Intro. 624-A), which takes effect in March 2012, strengthens Local Law 35, originally passed in 1994, by improving coverage, cost control and protections for city workers.
- Feb. 2012 PEP: Making progress: Reining in the waste of contracting out - There's still a long way to go in the union's battle to save jobs and tax funds from unbridled contracting out, but the amended Local Law 35, which should curb the practice, takes effect in March 2012. The New York City Council's 48-0 enactment of the law in December 2011 over Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's veto represented a milestone in the union's long campaign to draw public attention to the waste, inefficiency and corruption in the city's contracting out.
- Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012 PEP: Congressional briefing at DC 37 - A congressional briefing at DC 37 on Nov. 22, 2011, explored the city's possible misuse of federal tax dollars and its failure to monitor contracting out. District Council 37 called for possibly the first-ever union-sponsored congressional inquiry into runaway contracting out and improper spending of federal funds, which continues without adequate oversight. The theft and waste of hundreds of millions of dollars has occurred as thousands of city employees have lost their jobs and the civil service system is under attack.
- Nov. 2011 PEP: New law faces Bloomberg veto: Stronger rules on contracting - As the Bloomberg administration continued to be embarrassed by reports that it paid millions of dollars to crooked consultants, the City Council voted to strengthen a local law aimed at preventing contracting out from displacing public employees.
- Sept. 2011 PEP: Education for profit: Klein, Murdoch and a no-bid contract - The former schools chancellor joins a media magnate in the lucrative world of education for profit: Only 13 days after Mayor Bloomberg's former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said he was joining media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. on Nov. 9, 2010, the firm announced that it was buying Wireless Generation, an education technology firm. A few weeks later, New York State began discussions with Wireless Generation on a $27 million no-bid contract for education data work.
- July-August 2011 PEP: CityTime fraud tab now $600 million - The arrests keep coming, and it's not just a few "bad apples" at CityTime. Virtually all of the $600 million the city paid the primary contractor on the automated payroll project is "tainted, directly or indirectly, by fraud," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said June 20, 2011, as he announced charges against four more executives on the contracted-out operation. "This vast scale of inefficiency and corruption would be unimaginable with projects run by civil service workers," DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said.
- June 2011 PEP: Consultant arrested in school rip-off; Contracting out robs children and taxpayers - As municipal unions campaign for stricter regulation of contracting out, another computer consultant was arrested in a $3.6 million scam at the Dept. of Education. On April 28, 2011, computer consultant Willard Lanham was charged with ripping off $3.6 million from the school system as he worked on three major projects, including ProjectConnect, which aims to hook up the city's 1,400 public schools to the Internet.
- May 2011 PEP: Unionists blast cuts and contracting out - District Council 37 went on the offensive during March 2011 against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposed massive budget cuts, which would wipe out thousands of jobs and shrink public services. Union leaders pressed the City Council to restore the funding needed to keep parks, libraries and swimming pools open, protect children and schools and prevent layoffs. Leading the charge was Executive Director Lillian Roberts, who went before the City Council's Finance and Contracts Committees March 24, 2011, with proposals that would save the city hundreds of millions of dollars.
- March-April 2011 PEP: Massive waste and fraud in contracting out –A Feb. 25, 2011, union hearing exposed the Bloomberg administration's vast waste of taxpayer dollars on contracting out and underscored how the out-of-control use of contractors and consultants threatens the jobs of municipal workers, encourages corruption and damages public services. Speakers called contracting out a key weapon in the arsenal that anti-government interests are using to undermine public employee unions from Wisconsin to New York.
- February 2011 PEP: CityTime consultants charged in $80 million heist - Hundreds of DC 37 members could get pink slips soon as the city implements a plan to wipe out over 10,000 municipal jobs in the next 18 months. Facing a projected $3.3 billion budget gap, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month announced that he would eliminate 2,102 positions by June 30, 2011, and 8,264 more in the year starting July 1. Before Bloomberg issued his mid-year budget modification on Nov. 18, Roberts wrote him, specifying revenue enhancements that could help avoid slashing jobs and services.
- January 2011 PEP: Uncollected revenue could stop layoffs – DC 37 has shown the Bloomberg administration how to bring in $530 million in lost revenue - including taxes the city is doing little to collect - but instead, the mayor is moving forward with a plan to lay off thousands of municipal employees and gut public services.
- December 2010 PEP: Bloomberg to kill 10,000 jobs – DC 37 demands mayor collect neglected taxes - Hundreds of DC 37 members could get pink slips soon as the city implements a plan to wipe out over 10,000 municipal jobs in the next 18 months. Facing a projected $3.3 billion budget gap, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month announced that he would eliminate 2,102 positions by June 30, 2011, and 8,264 more in the year starting July 1. Before Bloomberg issued his mid-year budget modification on Nov. 18, Roberts wrote him, specifying revenue enhancements that could help avoid slashing jobs and services.
- Oct. – Nov. 2010 PEP: Victory over contracting out - Union workers win over contracting out - To take over from the City Time contractor - City Comptroller John Liu and the Bloomberg administration have agreed to end contracting out for the CityTime payroll and timekeeping system, capping a long-campaign by DC 37, which raised the alarm about the billion-dollar boondoggle.
Liu and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Sept. 28, 2010, that the city would end its contract with Science Applications International Corp. by June 30, 2011. After that, city employees will take over the work on the troubled system.
- Oct. – Nov. 2010 PEP: DC 37 blasts HHC cutback plan - DC 37 sharply criticized the Health and Hospitals Corp.'s 2010 plan to balance its budget through destructive downsizing in "Public Health Care Under the Knife," a white paper issued Sept. 17, 2010, by Executive Director Lillian Roberts. The union charged that HHC's restructuring plan, "The Road Ahead," uses a "slash-and-burn" approach to the public hospitals' financial problems and is deeply marred by conflicts of interest, ideology-driven contracting out and unsubstantiated cost-efficiency analyses.
- June
2010 PEP: How to fix broken budgets - Cut contracting out, raise revenue
- Recently, DC 37 released a four-page update on its 2009 white paper, "Massive
Waste at a Time of Need." The new 2010 report, "A Better Way to Balance
the Budget," reveals that the Bloomberg administration plans to raise spending
on outside contracts by more than $250 million to $9.5 billion in fiscal year
2011, which begins on July 1, 2010.
- May
2010 PEP: Mayor Bloomberg's budget: $2.9 billion deficit
- With the threat of devastating service cuts and up to 19,000 layoffs under Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg's doomsday budget for 2011, our bleak financial times demand
that NYC consider new sources of revenue and bring in outstanding taxes and uncollected
fines, which total at least $2 billion.
- April
2010 PEP: Three worst rip-offs
- Three cases exposed by DC 37 and the media demonstrate the pitfalls of doling
out projects to contractors for work that union members could do more effectively:
CityTime, Emergency Communication Transformation Project and School Payroll System.
- April
2010 PEP: Bloomberg raises contract budget
- With layoffs and service reductions looming, the Bloomberg administration plans
to increase its wasteful spending on contractors and consultants next year. Spending
on contracts would increase from $9.2 billion in the current 2010 fiscal year
to $9.5 billion in fiscal year 2011 if the mayor's preliminary budget is adopted.
- February
2010 PEP: Citytime contract 1,000% over budget
- DC 37 leaders blasted a 1,000 percent cost overrun on a computer contract -
still unfinished after 12 years - that the city gave to former Giuliani officials
with ties to the Bloomberg administration.
- January
2010 PEP: Roberts: Feds should investigate the mess at 911
- DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts called for federal and local investigations
of the city's problem-plagued 911 Emergency Response System and demanded a thorough
audit of spending on the project to merge the police, fire and ambulance call-taking
and dispatch systems.
- December
2009 PEP: Consultants botch call center project
- The city's $1.3 billion plan to upgrade its 911 system has become a gold mine
for contractors but a black hole for city taxpayers. The Emergency Communications
Transformation Project is running two years behind schedule, and a $730,000 cost
overrun has raised its price to $2 billion. Mismanagement and conflicts of interest
plague the contracted-out plan to merge the Police, Fire and Emergency Medical
Service call-in and dispatch operations into a single system.
- October/November
2009 PEP: Contracting out wastes millions as schools lay off workers
- With mass layoffs of school workers looming, the new Panel for Education policy
voted Sept. 14 to renew a $54 million no-bid deal with computer consultant Future
Technology Associates on a project that civil servants could to at a lower cost.
- September
2009 PEP: Contracting OUT wastes money, Contracting IN saves
- Examples of the waste involved in contracting out at the NYC Dept. of Education
and on temp agencies citywide, and the money and jobs saved at the NYC Dept. of
Transportation and the New York Public Library by letting DC 37 members do the
work.
September
2009 - NYC Board of Education Employees Local 372 Radio Ad Against School Layoffs:
- Hear school children talk about the
dedicated school employees who helped them, but who now face layoff at a time
when private consultants and outside contractors are funded by $9 billion of the
city's $60 billion budget. The radio ads ran on 1010 WINS, WBLS, WCBS, WWRL and
WKRS. (mp3 format) For details, click
here.
- September
2009 - Social Service Employees Union Local 371 Video Against Administration for
Children's Services Layoffs:
- SSEU Local 371 President Faye Moore and Local 371 members speak up for New York
City's vulnerable children who, like Nixmary Brown, could be at risk if 500 ACS
workers are laid off. Their message: "Our children should always come first."
They ask the public to call Mayor Bloomberg at (212) 788-0268 and tell him to
save these essential jobs.
- July-August
2009 PEP: Mobilize!
- Hundreds of members enlisted to be the frontline troops in a citywide mobilization
to combat contracting out, protect public services and save jobs.
- June
2009 PEP: Shadow government wastes millions – Contractors, consultants and
corruption. The city’s growing reliance on contracting out municipal
work without government oversight causes a huge waste of taxpayers’ dollars,
say union and other critics of the practice.
- May
2009 PEP: Union hits contracting out in schools system
- The Dept. of Education contract budget for the next fiscal year is $3.3 billion,
accounting for more than a third of the New York City's contracting-out expenditures.
- April
2009 PEP: Massive waste at a time of need -
A new DC 37 white paper identifies 10 cases where the city could save about $130
million by eliminating wasteful outside contracts and highly paid consultants
doing municipal work, which costs taxpayers a total of $9 billion citywide.
- April
2009 PEP: Dump contractors, hire Job Training Participants -
Only 90 minutes after DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts unveiled the new
white paper about the $9 billion "shadow government" of consultants
and contractors, a City Council hearing explored the union proposal to replace
outside custodial contracts with workers from the city's Job Training Participant
program.
-
DC
37 Radio Show - March 29, 2009 - The White Paper: Massive Waste at a Time of Need
- DC 37 Assistant Associate Editor Henry
Garrido and the Director of DC 37's Blue Collar Division Jose Sierra discuss how
the City can save over $130 million by ending contracts to an unelected and unaccountable
"shadow government" of private contractors and outside consultants.
(mp3 format)
- Press
Coverage: Recent NYC and NYS press coverage on this issue
- Community
Flyer:
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