The Streets Were Paved with Gold (27 page)

City managers, who are supposed to check time clocks, not punch them, receive overtime pay.
In most cases, this overtime is called compensatory time and requires that managers fill out time sheets. If they earn more than $22,500 and work more than 40 hours in a week, these hours can be used as additional vacation days; or they can be banked and paid in a lump sum at the termination of city service. Until January 1978, managers were allowed to collect up to one year of accumulated overtime, sick leave and vacation pay. When First Deputy Mayor James Cavanagh retired after 37 years with the city, for instance, he received a lump sum equal to his final year’s salary—$49,849. The average departing city executive, a 1977 survey by Comptroller Goldin disclosed, was paid for 36 overtime days—not counting the overtime days already taken off, the unused vacation and sick days, and terminal leave pay. In the first week of the new Koch administration, after executives from the outgoing Beame administration submitted claims for $5.5 million of overtime and severance pay, Koch concurred with a Goldin directive limiting severance pay to 54 days.

Some city managers receive straight overtime pay.
The former executive assistant to the Fire Commissioner accumulated almost $11,000 in one recent 9-month period. Police lieutenants and fire marshals also receive overtime pay. The potential harm of overtime pay for managerial personnel is suggested by looking at detectives. They used to work round the clock until a case was broken. It was a matter of professional pride. The reward: promotions, or just getting to keep their gold shields. When promotion opportunities were reduced in the early seventies, the Detectives Endowment Association demanded, and won, cash overtime. Paid overtime was
limited to 100 hours. Anything above the ceiling could be taken as time off. With the fiscal crisis, city officials push to hold down overtime costs and detectives resist working extra hours unless they’re paid overtime. One result: solved homicide cases have slipped dramatically.

Police and firemen who donate blood are given a bonus day off.
Thus charity is rewarded—4,938 days’ worth to police in 1977. “No one should get those days off,” says city Director of Labor Relations Anthony Russo. “They’re men with good constitutions. Civilians don’t get them.”

Uniformed employees—including police, fire, corrections officers, Transit and Housing police—are granted one personal leave day each year “for whatever reason.” Sanitation men agreed to temporarily sacrifice this privilege during the fiscal crisis.
In urging repeal of this contract provision, the Koch administration calculated the city could save $2.4 million annually, adding 45,000 workdays.

Police or firemen who are veterans and whose chart requires them to work on Veterans or Memorial Day, must receive compensatory time off,
according to state law.

Election Day is declared a special paid holiday, though state law requires only that voting not be hindered.
Since voting hours are from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., there is no conflict with the workday. In proposing to eliminate this holiday from employee contracts, the Koch administration estimated the city would save $5 million.

All uniformed employees are allowed unlimited non-line-of-duty sick leave.
In the last 6 months of 1977, police averaged 16.5 sick days—about 1,000 cops out sick each day. Sanitation men averaged 14 sick days. This permissive policy contrasts with that of the Soviet Union, which rigidly monitors sick leave, or with Teamster workers in the private carting industry who aren’t paid if they’re out sick. The city’s sick leave policy can lead to abuse. “They have a buddy system,” explains Commissioner Russo. “ ‘Say, Joe, you take tomorrow off, and I’ll get time and a half to take your place.’ You see, the guy who takes Joe’s place has to be paid time and a half. Then the next time they reverse, and Joe gets time and a half.” In proposing to replace unlimited with 12 sick days annually, the Koch administration calculated a savings of $3.4 million over 2 years. If workers were not paid for the first half-day out sick, as is customary in private industry, Koch said the city would save $13 million over 2 years.

All other city employees receive 10 to 20 sick days, and are allowed to accumulate these from year to year.
Sick days, which were designed to ensure that workers would not be penalized for legitimate illnesses, thus become additional vacation days. When the worker leaves government, he or she is paid on the basis of 1 day’s pay for every 2 sick days not taken, up to a maximum of 120 days. Unlike many city workers, teachers aren’t required to submit even a friendly doctor’s note. They have what is called “10 self-treated days.” Instead of overtime costs, this leads to substitute teacher costs—$19.6 million in 1976–77. Sick days are granted to the bosses as well. The average departing city executive is reimbursed for 29 unused sick days, according to Comptroller Goldin.

The Transit Authority’s union contract prohibits part-time employees, ballooning overtime costs.
A November 1977 audit by Sidney Schwartz, the Control Board’s Special Deputy Comptroller, sketched how this requirement for a minimum 8-hour day invites abuse: A Staten Island-to-Manhattan express bus driver leaves his depot at 7
A.M.
, completing his morning run by 8:30. His next run is not until 5:30
P.M.
and is completed by 7. In between the two runs, the driver may go home. For 3 hours of actual work, the driver receives 10½ hours’ pay, including 7 hours of what is called “swing time” and one-half hour of “penalty” time. If permitted to hire parttimers—to conform to rider habits rather than worker convenience—the Authority would pay for only 3 hours’ work. Schwartz’s audit disclosed: in 1976, 1,000 of nearly 9,000 bus drivers earned overtime 40 percent above their base pay of $14,800. Built-in overtime is standard for most of the Authority’s 33,000 employees and explains why the Authority’s overtime bill was $54.7 million in 1976–77—more than was spent by all mayoral agencies combined—and more than half the cost of the new 2-year contract negotiated by the transit workers in April 1978. This built-in overtime is used to determine vacation pay and pensions, which is why many transit pensions exceed 120 percent of the employee’s base salary for his final year. The Authority’s new contract with its workers, negotiated on April 1, 1978, allows the hiring of up to 200 part-timers, but since they are prohibited from performing the tasks of full-timers, the ban on part-timers continues.

The city follows what’s called “minimum manning” practices in the sanitation, police and fire departments.
All sanitation pickup trucks must carry 3 men, though most cities and private carters use 2, sometimes 1. The city would like to employ 2 men in less dense
residential areas—in effect, expanding the work force—but the union won’t permit it. Most cities use 1-man patrol cars in lowcrime districts. For years, the city required 2, and is only now gingerly experimenting with 1-man cars. The fire department once had a contract requiring 5 men to a fire engine company and 6 to a truck company. An arbitrator recently waived that requirement, reducing the number to 4 and 5, respectively. However, because of “minimum manning,” if 1 man is absent the department is required to pay overtime to a fireman from the previous shift. “The number of men on a truck doesn’t matter,” says Commissioner Russo. “What matters is the number of men at a fire.” In proposing the elimination of minimum manning, the Koch administration said the city could save $45 million in reduced overtime over 2 years.

The firemen’s contract contains what is called a “mutual,” allowing some firefighters to commute to work but once a week.
Instituted some years ago to “boost morale,” a “mutual” permits a fireman to work at least a 9-hour tour of duty for a friend who wants to take off. The friend has 15 days to return the favor. Since firemen have living quarters in the firehouse, by exchanging several “mutuals” a fireman can compress his work week into three consecutive exhausting days. Thus a fair number of firemen moonlight on a second job—and, fatigued, risk their own and the public’s lives.

Many “managers” hold “seldom-show” jobs.
The Board of Water Supply sports two commissioners at $20,000 and a chairman who earns $25,000. Each is rewarded a limousine for this lifetime appointment. Yet each is required to attend but one meeting a week and is permitted a full-time job outside government.
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The City Council retains a huge staff, including people who make guest appearances to collect checks. Gerald Esposito, a former Bronx Democratic district leader, receives $18,700 for part-time work on “special research projects”; Murray Lewinter, secretary to the Bronx Democratic organization, garners $31,975 to “supervise” the Council’s staff. Two councilmen, Eugene Mastropieri and Theodore Silverman, employ their wives under their maiden names. A 1977 audit by Comptroller Goldin spotlighted physicians paid with city funds who signed in but did not show up for work. In one hospital, Bellevue, taxpayers were cheated out of $8 million annually
by doctors who “were not on the job when they were supposed to be.” Supreme Court judges, a study by the Economic Development Council found, often did not work a full day. They averaged but 3½ hours a day on the bench hearing felony cases. Supreme Court judges working a full day, they concluded, would equal 3 dozen new courtrooms, worth $20 million.

“Summer hours”—a 30-hour week—are granted clerical and other workers in non-air-conditioned offices.
This does not apply to workers hired after 1976, when their union, D.C. 37, sacrificed this benefit for all new employees.
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They also sacrificed “summer hours” for all employees working in air-conditioned offices. Still, a union leader muses, “When we gave back summer hours the city couldn’t account for $5 in savings. Call up your friends at 4
P.M.
on a Friday in the summer and see how many you find.”

Three “heat days” off are granted certain workers in non-air-conditioned settings.
This benefit applies only to those who’ve worked at least 1 year and, usually, only when the temperature reaches 90°. In the summer of 1977, 14,000 hospital workers received either this benefit or shorter summer hours.

Employees are paid for special time off, including “administrative,” “maintenance,” “wash-up” and “check-cashing” time, “rest periods,” “preparation periods,” coffee breaks and lunch hours.
Officers in the fire department daily receive a half-hour of “administrative time” to wash up and write reports. Firemen get a half-hour a day for “maintenance of personal firefighting gear.” Sanitation men end their work day 15 minutes early for paid “wash-up time” and receive 2 daily “rest periods” totaling 25 minutes. Transit workers get “wash-up” and “check-cashing” time. High school and junior high school teachers receive five 45-minute “preparation periods” a week—eight if they work in the 50 percent of city schools that have a majority of “disadvantaged” students. The average academic high school teacher, according to a 1978 audit by Comptroller Goldin, spends 64 percent of his or her work day in the classroom; a vocational high school teacher, 66 percent; a junior high school teacher, 67 percent. An additional 27,000 periods of classroom instruction could be provided each week, concluded the audit, by having non-teachers perform the administrative and other “in lieu of instruction” activities currently performed by teachers. “This would have the same effect,” they found, “as increasing
the instruction budget by 1,080 teachers, or $23.1 million.” All police and housing patrolmen, plus all transit workers, enjoy a paid lunch hour each day. Sanitation men have a half-hour paid lunch. All other city workers are not paid for lunch. If police received the same half-hour as sanitation men, the city would gain 2,600,000 additional hours of police coverage a year—the equivalent of hiring 1,500 police officers.

Social service employees are excused for 480 minutes of lateness before being penalized.
Commissioner Russo’s office calculates that a policy of “cash docking for lateness” could save the city about $10 million.

The civil service and collective bargaining system effectively guarantees a city job as a right.
Termination procedures are so difficult that employees often feel independent of their “boss.” According to the city’s personnel manual, “the employee attains permanent status” after a brief probationary period (usually 6 months). He or she may “be discharged only after a formal hearing,” and the grievance procedure invokes 6 to 8 steps and consumes about 9 months (21 months in the federal government). If an employee is promoted and fails in the new position, it is required that “he must be restored to a position in his former title.” This almost fail-safe system explains why the city demoted only 4 and fired only 235 employees for unsatisfactory performance in 1977. That’s a better percentage than the federal government, which terminated 200 out of 2.9 million civil service employees (down from 226 in 1976).

Managers, or bosses, are a privileged class, almost immune from layoffs.
Under civil service seniority requirements, a laid-off employee has the right to bump any non-civil service worker (provisional) or any civil service worker in their agency with less seniority. Since workers usually get to be managers by inching up the civil service ladder, they become untouchables. The city’s Director of Operations, Lee Oberst, identified 3,000 surplus city managers and supervisors. If they were terminated, Oberst said in early 1978, taxpayers would save about $90 million. Yet the mayor can’t fire them. Because of state civil service law and seniority requirements, workers must be laid off on the basis of seniority—last hired, first fired. Suppose, then, that in New York’s Wonderland the mayor or commissioner decides to terminate an administrative manager. They probably can’t. Because the administrative manager invariably inched up the seniority ladder, he or she has seniority. So
the person below is bumped—a senior administrative assistant bumps an administrative associate, who bumps a supervisory clerk, who bumps a senior clerk, who bumps the most junior employee, a clerk. Result: The mayor aims to fire an incompetent or surplus boss and winds up hitting an innocent clerk. The city doesn’t save the $90 million because clerks earn less than bosses. Which is why, with the exception of a few civil service managers in the Sanitation Department, no civil service managers were laid off during a 3-year period (1975–78) when 25,000 city workers were severed. “It’s crazy,” complains Russo. “You end up with more Chiefs than Indians.”