Taking a Stand
By Jimmie Turner
Union members win jobs back in a move that saves millions of dollars annually.
NEW YORK CITY
It was a fight that no one wanted: police administrative aides (PAAs) filing a grievance against the New York Police Department to reclaim lost jobs. But uniformed officers had routinely done work traditionally assigned to AFSCME members — displacing close to 3,500 of them — so the clericals had to take action.
Says Lenora Gates, Local 1549 (DC 37) executive vice president: "We are not making this like a Hatfield and McCoy feud; we don't want an adversarial role with the police. We were just trying to recapture the positions that should be rightfully ours."
On Sept. 2, after a 10-year legal battle, the workers emerged victorious when an arbitrator ruled that the NYPD had violated a "clerical unit agreement by assigning the duties of [PAAs] and senior PAAs to members of the police department." At the conclusion of the long and arduous campaign, DC 37 activists were elated because they had accomplished the goal of every AFSCME affiliate: doing whatever it takes to preserve members' jobs.
The decision forces the NYPD to put officers back on the streets, a move that will help improve security in the Big Apple — a city still haunted by memories of the 9/11 terror attacks. In addition, the transfer of officers to normal police duties could save as much as an estimated $100 million a year, one of several cost-cutting proposals that DC 37 had already issued to the mayor in a series of white papers, detailing wasteful spending in city agencies. On average, police officers make twice as much money as PAAs.
STEADFAST & RESOLUTE. The case took nearly a decade to settle because the NYPD had an intricate, yet informal, operation of shifting and renaming job classifications and internal units to keep uniformed personnel in desk jobs. Those positions were considered easy duty compared with patrolling a beat.
Frustrated with the situation, clericals started submitting individual complaints — until the problem became so widespread that a group grievance had to be filed. PAAs had the daunting task of identifying and naming officers who were being assigned to the clerical/administrative duties of their job titles in violation of DC 37's contract with the city. The employees then had to testify before the arbitrator. Says Gates, a senior PAA in the police department, "it took a lot of courage" for them to step forward and name the officers with whom they work every day.
In addition, dozens of PAAs took to New York's streets to hand out fliers to passers-by in an effort to gain public support. Of the lengthy legal battle, Gates points out that, "What we were able to do reinforces the grievance process for our members. It's not necessarily a quick process, but it does work."
