Organized Labor

Seniority is not an issue with most construction trade unionists. It isn't in our contracts; we are instead more or less insulated by the hiring hall from a need for continuity with one employer. "There's another job where that one came from," we say, or "I was looking for a job when I found that one." Trades workers with the City also have access to our hiring halls if they quit or are laid off or fired. Their benefit plans, though, are not ours, and a separation from City employment can separate them from their benefits. Seniority therefore has some importance for them.

The City is discussing substituting a civil service system based on "performance evaluations" for the system based on seniority. This is a truly bad idea.

(The City is also discussing an end to "bumping rights," which are based on seniority. This would be the subject for another column entirely, and so I will say no more about them here than that we oppose ending them.)

Most City jobs cannot be metered like production line jobs. Neither can they generally be judged by the kind of standards applied in new construction, such as pounds of flux-core wire welded daily, squares of roofing laid, board feet of sheet rock hung. This is true even of and maybe especially of the work done by the City's in-house trades workers. Anyone who has done retrofit or repair work understands that it is far more unpredictable than new construction. Not until a slab, wall, or street is opened does anyone really know what it contains, even if the drawings for the original work survive. Not until the sun comes up does a gardener know what is in the park. Most of the work done by the trades for the City is retrofit or maintenance and repair work. Judging "performance" in this work is not widget-counting. "Performance evaluations" of such work are necessarily imprecise; they beg subjectivity of anyone obliged to deliver them, and so they open the door to the cronyism and corruption the civil service system is meant to shut out.

Beyond this, any institution providing retrofit or repair as a daily public service sees its work spike at some times, flatten at others. From time to time a century-old brick sewer collapses, a storm drops trees across city streets, a barge breaks loose and drifts into and damages a pier. At such times, the City's in-house trades must be well-staffed and capable enough to respond instantly to a call for their services. at times when demand is not so intense, however, the same level of staffing, and even of skill might seem extraneous. What would a "performance evaluation" of a worker, based primarily on such periods of less intense activity actually reveal about the performance of, the necessity of that worker?

Their advocates say the City would be emulating private industry in instituting "performance evaluations." The building trades know that it is not our industry, the City would be emulating; formal "performance evaluations" are little known among us, and yet we are among the most productive of workers. Where they are used, a host of horrific examples could be cited to show their misuse. Discrimination of all kinds, sexual harassment, rewarding of the "suck-up," punishment of the worker who speaks uncomfortable truth -- all these ills and more can be and have been folded into the pages of "performance evaluations."

To have any slight possibility of fairness, then, the evaluations themselves must be open to appeal and review. Almost any use the City might propose to make of them -- for promotions, discipline, order of preference in layoffs, regulation of transfer between departments, singling out for special rewards -- will be of deep personal importance to City workers. With 26,000 City workers, and assuming only annual reviews and a conservative five percent appeal rate, the City would have to hold formal hearings on 1300 appealed evaluations a year. This is impracticable. Realistically, both the frequency of evaluation and the rate of appeal could be higher.

How would this achieve the "streamlining" of the civil service system and City government that the proponents of "civil service reform" profess to desire?

The City should make better use of the system it has. This requires that managers and supervisors do their jobs, including careful judgments on the early performance of new hires, careful documentation of clear instances or patterns of worker underperformance or misbehavior, and careful decisions on dismissal. We Building Trades representatives can be expected to fulfill our duties of representation of our members and to insist that they be treated fairly and be given a fair hearing whenever they feel an action against them is unwarranted. This does not excuse managers and supervisors from fulfilling their duties.

Nor does it or any issue yet raised give the City genuine cause to substitute the noxious expedient of "performance evaluations" for the seniority system.