The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [90]
When set against the backdrop of New York’s fiscal crisis and economic decline, these facts seem to add up to a disaster. But they also add up to an opportunity. Since no one can deny the city is engaged in a struggle for survival, New York has the rare opportunity to alter dramatically the way government—which accounts for about one quarter of the nation’s GNP—delivers services. While it is commonly assumed that the federal government is the giant bureaucracy, in fact four of every five civilian government workers—12 million—are employed by state and local governments. And one of every seven American workers is on the payroll of a local government. Local government is not only our largest industry, says the National Council on Municipal Performance, it is “our least efficient.” In this sense, New York can again be a pioneer: closing its performance as well as its budget gap; figuring out how to do more for less.
Today, New York is a pioneer of another sort. Its basic management and personnel system, like a huge, immovable rock, has so far weathered the fiscal storm. Imagine beneath that unscathed rock lurks a rabbit sporting a watch in its waistcoat pocket. Follow him down the rabbit hole and enter New York City’s very own Wonderland, where you find:
City employees enjoy a 4-day work week. According to a 1976 report from the Temporary Commission, many city employees work 210 out of a possible 261 workdays. They average 25 days’ vacation, 12 sick days, 11 holidays, half a day for death in the family, and over two days’ terminal leave. City teachers receive about 75 days off, including summer, Christmas and Easter vacations. City University professors receive about 80 days off, and a full professor, reports the Commission, is paid $33,475 for less than 11 hours a week in the classroom. Beginning sanitation men get 5 weeks’ paid vacation (private carters in the Teamsters Union get 2 weeks the first year and 5 weeks only after 15 years). The average policeman or fireman is off about 55 days a year. After three years, all uniformed employees—police, fire, sanitation, corrections officers, Housing and Transit police—receive 27 days vacation. In addition, cops, corrections officers, Housing and Transit police get another 8 chart days off in return for an extra 15 minutes spent each workday on paperwork and checking in and out. (They won an additional 6 chart days in the 1978 labor negotiations.) Sergeants do even better, receiving 18 to 28 chart days off. The Emergency Financial Control Board has reported that the reduction of sergeants’ chart days off to 8 would be equivalent to adding 256 sergeants to the police force. If there were no chart days for patrolmen, the Police Department has said, the extra coverage would be equivalent to adding 900 cops. If the city followed the same annual leave policies as the state, noted the Temporary Commission, over the next 25 years it could save almost $2 billion.
City managers, who are supposed to check time clocks, not punch them, receive overtime pay. In most cases, this overtime is called compensatory time and requires that managers fill out time sheets. If they earn more than $22,500 and work more than 40 hours in a week, these hours can be used as additional vacation days; or they can be banked and paid in a lump sum at the termination of city service. Until January 1978, managers were allowed to collect up to one year of accumulated overtime, sick leave and vacation pay. When First Deputy Mayor James Cavanagh retired after 37 years with the city, for instance, he received a lump sum equal to his final year’s salary—$49,849. The average departing