Only a few of the thousands of Jewish civil service employees dismissed in the city’s massive 1975-76 austerity cutbacks have benefited from limited recent rehiring, an expert in such employment reported.
Louis Weiser, president of the Council of Jewish Organizations in Civil Service, said the proportion of Jews among dismissed civil service workers had remained constant at around 50 percent as the number of layoffs rose from around 24,000 in March, 1976, to around 30,000 at the end of 1976 when some rehiring was started by the administration of Mayor Abraham Beame. Both city funds and money from the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) is being used in the rehiring, Weiser said.
Weiser told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the largest number of layoffs of Jewish employees were among those employed by the Board of Education, which is not controlled by the city administration. He said some 6000 such workers had been laid off, including teachers, administrative workers and guidance counselors. They did not include some 5000 Jewish substitute teachers who were not included among the Board of Education’s permanent civil service employees.
He estimated that about 1000 of the dismissed Jewish education department workers have been rehired, adding this meant that about 5000 such Jewish city workers had not regained their jobs, “as of now” Throughout his comments, Weiser stressed the difficulty of obtaining complete and reliable data on both the dismissals and rehiring in the various city departments.
3 CATEGORIES ON PREFERRED LIST
He said the Jewish teachers were being rehired on the basis of three categories: recertification, preferred list, and under the Aspira consent decree. He said recertification means that a teacher trained to teach in an area now in oversupply undertook to learn a different field and was rehired to teach in his or her new field.
Teachers on the preferred list are those with experience and are rehired on that basis. The Aspira consent decree, entered into about two years ago, requires the Board of Education to provide bilingual teachers for Spanish-speaking children. Some Jewish teachers proficient in Spanish have been hired under that agreement, Weiser said.
He said he did not know how many of the non-Jewish Board of Education employees had been rehired. But, he said, all of the laid-off Hispanic teachers had been rehired under the Aspira agreement. Weiser described the situation of Jewish civil service workers in the city’s social services programs as largely unchanged from March 1976 when between 400 and 500 had been laid off.
He said there had been some rehiring, with CETA funds, in the police department, where about 150 Jewish men and women police were dismissed but that only 10 of those Jewish police had been rehired. There had been around 800 Jewish police men and women before the layoffs began. Weiser said limitations in use of CETA funds were affecting rehiring of Jews.
REHIRING ORDER BEING APPEALED
Another factor, he said, was a local federal court injunction requiring the city to give preference to Spanish-speaking and Black workers in rehiring, which the city is appealing to a federal appeals court.
Weiser said about 45,000 city employees have left the city payroll, mainly by attrition. He said most of the retirees — up to 95 percent — were white and of those, he said, at least half are Jews. He said this meant that most of the Jewish top and middle management personnel have left the city’s civil service.
Many of them, he said, declared they could see no future in city employment. Others claimed they had been asked to leave, he said. He added that, under normal circumstances, such Jewish management officials might have remained in city service.
Weiser said five ethnic groups had joined in a friend of the court brief in support of the city’s appeal against the injunction mandating preference for Spanish-speaking and Black workers. He listed them as the Shomrim Society of Jewish police; the Columbia Association, representing Italians; the Pulaski Society, representing Polish police officers; the Emerald Society, for lrish employees; and the Steuben Association for German employees.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
