TELLING IT LIKE IT IS — PEF members testify in July at a joint Assembly committee hearing on issues facing minorities in the state workforce. — Photo by Richard Dillard
Testimony, studies paint clear picture
Members to lawmakers: Racial bias thrives in state service
By SHERRY HALBROOK
At first glance, the New York state workforce may seem wide open to minorities. But at a July hearing in New York city state Assembly committees got an earful about the hard climb minorities have on state career ladders. And many of the criticisms and complaints were coming from PEF members.
“There is considerable concern among PEF members that the current civil service system has loopholes that allow administrators to subvert the merit system and allow appointments that do not involve competitive exams,” PEF Vice President Pat Baker, testified. She works at the state Office of Mental Health.
“Many of our minority members believe these mechanisms have been used by many state agencies to deny promotions to worthy minority candidates. Our members at Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, in particular, have reported recurrent use of these practices,” Baker said.
“This is a very serious problem that’s been going on for a long time,” she added.
For many who testified, the injustice was palpable and personal.
“Minorities are just temporary placeholders for (white) permanent appointees,” testified PEF Executive Board Member Lola Parks-Guerra, an administrative assistant at the state Health Department (DOH) in Brooklyn.
If the minority employee complains about being passed over for promotions, “they are told the position requires skills that are not on the list,” Parks-Guerra said. “The job description is written to fit the person the manager wants to hire or promote.”
Step to the back
PEF member Evarist Nicholas is a labor services representative whose job is among those of hundreds of minority employees at the state Labor Department’s Telephone Claims Center in New York city that are threatened. She was also blunt.
“If you’re black, step back!” Nicholas said.
The DOL’s plan to close the center forces the employees who are 83 percent non-whites to choose between their jobs and their homes in the city.
(See related article).
Nicholas, who immigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad decades ago, said she does not feel comfortable upstate, in part, because of the bias she confronted after she graduated from college and went to the DOL office in Sullivan County for help getting her first professional job.
“The woman behind the desk saw that I was black and asked, ‘Hair dresser or housekeeper?’ I told her I was looking for a job that would allow me to hire both,” Nicholas said. “She sent me on an interview for a job gathering stray balls on a tennis court.”
Race matters
“What’s the difference between discrimination and a hate crime?” demanded PEF member Mary McLeod, a DOH employee in New York City.
“The state needs diversity,” McLeod, testified. “Race matters. It matters every day.”
Parks-Guerra testified about a study of employee concerns and workplace issues conducted by a consultant in 1993 at DOH.
“This study found minority employees at all levels of DOH expressed great frustration over issues of lack of fairness in treatment and promotions, lack of respect by their supervisors for cultural differences, a disproportionate lack of upward mobility and the lack of a safe and effective means to raise issues of unfairness,” Parks-Guerra said.
“They cited numerous instances of being pressured to train people four or five grades higher (rather than get promoted into higher positions). It was noted their workload was significantly larger than that of their non-minority counterparts.”
Despite that report, “Nothing has changed,” Parks-Guerra said. “The state...did not follow up.”
Data documents loss
The lawmakers knew before they called the hearing that the news might be negative.
In April, Assembly Member Peter Rivera, chair of the Assembly Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, had released a report documenting the under-representation of minorities in the state’s civil service system
According to that report, which compared data for 1991 with 2003, Hispanics now make up approximately 15 percent of the entire state population, but account for only 3.8 percent of the 169,571 jobs in the state government workforce. Their share of state jobs was static while their share of the NYS population was growing.
The report found African-Americans lost ground in their fight for a share of state government jobs, even though their share of the population grew.
“Simultaneously, from 1991 through 2003, there has only been a reduction of 2.8 percent in the number of white employees in the civil service system in New York. Their total participation rate in government employment is 72.7 percent versus 75.5 percent in 1991,” the report said.
Sees no evil
Only one speaker of the many who came forward at the July hearing, saw the welcome mat out for minorities in state service.
State Civil Service Commissioner Daniel Wall claimed the civil service system is very fair to minorities. He discounted a lawsuit brought by Merton Simpson of Blacks in Government which charges the state’s promotion test battery is effectively an unfair and discriminatory bar to minority promotions.
Wall’s dismissal of Simpson — who was fired by the Department of Civil Service after 22 years — as merely a “disgruntled employee,” evoked an instant and angry response from the audience.
Retired Assembly Member Arthur Eve, who traveled from Buffalo to speak at the hearing, rebutted Wall’s claim. Citing a finding of the federal Equal Economic Opportunity Commission that investigated Simpson’s claims, Eve said:
“The EEOC report is very clear that there is discrimination. ....The exam’s only purpose is to deny these people of color the opportunity to keep their jobs. Even (employees with) PhDs have failed the exam because of the biased nature of it.”
Promotion exam ‘outrageous’
Evelyn Vieira, a PEF member at the state Office of Disability Determinations, told the lawmakers she worked her way up over 25 years from a grade 3 clerk position to a disability analyst 2.
Vieira said that although she scored 98 on the promotion test battery, she was passed over for the promotion to analyst in favor of a provisional employee with a lower score. With PEF’s support, Vieira said she eventually got the promotion, only to find “analyst is a dead-end job.”
“You sacrifice. You go to school. You’re qualified for a promotion, and then you take that promotion exam that doesn’t measure anything. It’s outrageous,” she said.
“The commissioner doesn’t want to address this issue. He doesn’t take it seriously. He is part of the problem,” McLeod told the Assembly members.
“We are going to form a political action group to make sure you address this.”
Angelo Falcon, senior policy executive and director of the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, was pessimistic that even the Legislature could effect real change in the system.
“You can come up with all the policies and procedures you want,” Falcon told the lawmakers. “But if people don’t want to implement them, they will find ways to subvert them, and that’s what’s happening here.”
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