Eviction Conniption
LONG ISLAND CITY, NEW YORK
It was like a scene from a Keystone Kops comedy. But to employees of a Long Island City Food Stamp office, their eviction by a city marshal was no joke.
Just a big and chilly mistake.
The Jan. 17 mini-drama opened with a cameo straight from a TV cop show: "Slowly move back from your desks," the marshal ordered roughly 45 clerical workers, as if each had a pistol in the drawer. The employees, members of Local 1549 (DC 37), were told to gather their per-sonal belongings and immediately leave the building.
"This was an old-fashioned eviction," says Dan Persons, acting director of DC 37’s clerical division and a deputy administrator of the local. It was no ordinary eviction, however. The city’s Human Resources Administration (HRA), which had been preparing to move the office to newly renovated quarters nearby, later said it was the agency’s understanding that they could remain at the premises until Jan. 29.
Then why the hasty eviction? It seems that the building landlord, having found another tenant, managed to persuade a local judge to order it. A mayoral-appointed marshal then carried out the order, assisted by police who also helped remove about 100 unhappy Food Stamp applicants; some of the latter refused to leave until their paperwork was processed.
Dumbfounded union officials listened to the goings-on by telephone until the employee telling the story was whisked away. "They threw our members and the public on the street, and that was no way for the agency to communicate to the people," Persons says. "There was no management on the site when this happened. The shop steward basically was left to take care of this."
Persons suspects that miscommunication between the city’s legal department and the HRA triggered the eviction: "The legal department apparently was telling HRA they were not facing eviction, and it turns out they were." HRA officials, for their part, offered no explanations.
The workers’ woes didn’t stop on the sidewalk. At the time of the eviction, their new office was not ready for occupancy. "Wires were exposed, and the electricity wasn’t turned on," says Persons. So the employees wound up being transferred to two other HRA offices pending completion of the remodeling.
