In an effort to bring a touch of reality to a system that is out of control, President Carl Haynes is urging Housing Authority officials to expand the work week for housing managers and superintendents to 40 hours a week with a commensurate increase in pay.

Haynes pointed out that managers and superintendents presently are supposed to work 35-hour weeks, a period of time much too short to accomplish all they are expected to do.

“For years it has been acknowledged that the scope of the job has been growing out of control,” Haynes said. “Management has never made a proper assessment of the workload.”

The Local President asserted that over the years, HA officials have “simply added duty after duty, report after report, and procedure after procedure until they reached the point where the operation is now dysfunctional.”

The frustration of trying to cope with the system was made apparent at the Jan. 29 meeting of the Housing Managers and Superintendents Chapter in union headquarters in Manhattan.

At the meeting, Manager Andrea Cohn and Superintendent Ruben Torres both pointed out that many of them must arrive early, stay late, work through lunch and bring work home to try to keep up with the load. “But it is impossible,” they insisted.

Haynes noted that the Housing Authority is well aware of the crisis because the Managers and Superintendents Committee, created during last year’s negotiations, gave them a lengthy written presentation of the problems.

Haynes charged that the Authority has continually mandated additional work with no consideration as to the time required to get it accomplished. “Everyone should be paid for the work they do, including managers and superintendents,” he said. “And if the HA doesn’t want to pay for the added responsibilities they assign, they had better eliminate a substantial portion of the workload.”

The HA representatives on the committee have never made any reply to the contention that the work mandated by the HA requires more time to finish than is allotted to it.

Management’s attitude, Haynes said, has ranged from “‘do more with less,’ and ‘work smarter to get it done, I don’t want any excuses’ and ‘get it done, or get written up.’”

Haynes insisted the HA “must take a responsible approach in dealing with the long-overdue problem,” and said the union is willing to discuss ways to relieve the burgeoning workload with the HA officials at any time.