A proposal by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to reduce the city’s provisional workers by consolidating titles and reclassifying them from competitive to non-competitive was opposed by several union leaders, including President Gregory Floyd. They testified at a June 11 oversight hearing before the City Council’s Civil Service Commission chaired by Councilman Joseph Addabbo Jr.

President Faye Moore of DC 37's Local 371 listens as President Gregory Floyd
testifies at the City Council hearing.

DCAS, which aims to reduce the city’s more than 35,000 provisionals to less than 10,000 and hold 140 civil service exams a year, up from 120, submitted its plan to the New York State Civil Service Commission for approval on June 10. The DCAS submission was in response to the Long Beach decision of the New York Court of Appeals last year, which resulted in a law with strict time limits requiring city agencies to remove provisional employees from positions in titles for which examinations should be held. In the interim, as employers submit their plans, the law waives time limits.

“DCAS rejects the obvious solution to this problem, which would be to expedite the civil service examinations required to fill these titles,” said Floyd. Instead, the agency plans to “declare certain titles noncompetitive to hire provisionals already in place as permanent employees without testing.”

"My favorite part is more exams,” said Addabbo, agreeing with Floyd. He also expressed concern that members will go without representation and asked about that. “The problem is patronage,” Floyd responded. “Corruption is what we are going back to.”

The issue of favoritism was revisited again in a post-hearing interview with The Chief Leader, which quoted Floyd as saying, “Can you imagine somebody’s nephew or niece being hired with no experience and placed in the higher title, supervising people? That’s what we’re opening ourselves up to. That’s why we have tests and we should stick with it.”

Floyd blamed former Mayor Giuliani, who combined agencies and “came up with DCAS,” for the resulting infrequent civil service exams and excess provisionals. “The answer is to go back to the system of the Department of Personnel and the Department of General Services. Separate the two agencies and re-staff the Department of Personnel so that they can give exams more frequently.”

Joining Floyd to testify were Faye Moore, president of DC 37’s Local 371, and Michelle Akyempong, Local 371’s vice president of political action. Moore emphasized that DCAS is “taking a backward step that denies the public a tested workforce,” and it is “trying to do too much too soon.”