New York Union Fights City’s Union-Busting Tactic

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dc1707.net/Day%20care%20union%20busting.htm

Clash Over OST Program
Day-Care Group: City Union-Busting
By MEREDITH KOLODNER
March 16, 2007

The city's day-care union and several elected officials charged last week that Mayor Bloomberg's re-organization of child-care services has resulted in illegal union-busting.

District Council 1707 officials filed a civil suit in an effort to force the city to comply with a 13-month-old arbitration ruling that ordered it to abide by the union's contract for all employees working inside day-care centers funded by the Administration for Children's Services.

Caught in the Switch

There are currently about 600 workers in 25 of the city's 44 unionized ACS day care centers who are without a union contract because their work was switched from ACS's jurisdiction to the Department of Youth and Community Development.

The union and some City Council members also say that many of the 13 unionized day-care centers are under-enrolled and risk being shut down because DYCD's new program, called Out of School Time, is pulling school-age children out of the centers. ACS officials say there are no plans to close the 13 centers.

Out of School Time (OST) consists of 550 programs citywide, most of which are non-union, that provide child care and after-school care for more than 63,000 children. Mayor Bloomberg is proposing $32 million in additional funds next year to expand the initiative, which is the largest of its kind in the country.

About 205 of the OST programs, which are run by non-profits, serve elementary school-age children, the population that DC 1707 members generally care for. The union estimates that there are thousands of non-union OST workers taking care of young children.

Makes Her Wonder

"I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories," said Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James at a March 8 Youth Services hearing, "but when I see this mass transfer of programs to DYCD and all this infusion of money into not-for-profits, and I see that ACS is getting out of the business of child-care centers, I have to ask whether or not this is nothing more than an attempt to engage in union-busting."

A spokeswoman for Mayor Bloomberg denied the charges. "The city has not engaged in union busting," Dawn Walker wrote in an e-mail. "This is not the policy of the Bloomberg Administration. The OST model is operating well and will continue as designed."

FULL story at link.