PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Arthur Cheliotes, Labor Union Leader from CWA 1180, on Civil Service Pathways and Retention
1:22:29
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8 min
Arthur Cheliotes, a former president of CWA Local 1180 and current chairman of the Labor Advisory Board at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, testified about the importance of both recruitment and retention in the civil service. He emphasized the need for programs that provide pathways for diverse candidates to enter and advance in civil service careers, highlighting his own experience and the success of various CUNY partnerships.
- Cheliotes stressed the importance of the CUNY Civil Service Pathways Fellowship and called for its expansion
- He highlighted the need to address pay disparities and promotional opportunities for women and people of color in the civil service
- The testimony included examples of successful programs, such as the para-professional to teacher pathway, that have helped city workers advance their careers through education
Arthur Cheliotes
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First, happy.
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How about Halloween?
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And thank you, Jared Dolores, and Jared Dinowicz, and my long time friend Gail Brewer for the comments that she made earlier regarding OMB.
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I could give you horror stories.
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If you're ready to listen, But let me offer my testimony here.
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I entered city service in 1972 and served as president of local 11 80 with 13 consecutive 3 year terms starting in 1979.
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Until Lori Middleton was elected and took office in 2018.
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For decades, we have been a team fighting for dignity, justice, and respect for our members who are predominantly women of color.
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So right in your workforce, you have a diverse workforce.
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I currently serve as the chairman of the Labor Advisory Board of the City University of New York School of Labor And Urban Studies.
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And president of the CUNY School of Labor Studies Foundation.
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I serve I I have served in various advisory capacities at Queens College and at Joseph Joseph Murphy Institute.
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I am also a native New Yorker, son of an undocumented immigrant who was also an army cook in World War 2.
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I am a proud product of the New York City public school system and a tuition free City University.
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Within a year of earning my degree from Queens College, I qualified to take a competitive civil service test and scored well enough to be appointed a year later as an income maintenance specialist at Department of Social Services.
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That was followed by a succession of written, competitive, promotional tests where I scored well enough to reach the top of my occupational group as an administrative manager.
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My ability to earn a good salary and health benefits and a tier 1 pension by the way allowed me to move from the working class to the middle class.
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The two important documents which symbolize my success are my Queen's College diploma and my CWA Local Liberty Union Membership card.
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They are the vehicles to the middle class, unions, and a college degree.
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The Quni Civil Service Pathways Fellowship, a partnership with Quni And VKS, must be supported and expanded.
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This program is an import is important to recruit recruiting to a facility government.
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It must also adhere to the important standards of merit and fitness mandated by the state constitution and civil service law.
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This partnership is laudable, but recruitment is not enough, retention is also required if we are to provide the important public services New Yorkers, our families, friends, and neighbors need and deserve.
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In the committee briefing documents, when you cite the following chancellor Rodriguez wrote in his op ed, that CUNY bore a particular obligation to to our diverse student population, many of whom are from the underrepresented communities cited by speaker Adams, and are prime candidates for pathways to economic stability.
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By increasing diversity in the civil service, may I continue?
Carmen De La Rosa
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You may continue, but we have some more folks that also signed up to testify.
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So if you could summarize some of the points, that would be Okay.
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Amazing.
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But continue, please.
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Thank you.
Arthur Cheliotes
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Well, earlier this year, we appeared before you regarding the diversity of the paid diversity report.
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And in it, the current public workers especially minority women, have been segregated into low paying jobs.
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Quni could be a vehicle for them to move into higher paying jobs, but it requires the cooperation of decays who understands that these current workers cannot be neglected as you might.
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The Williamsburg Bridge before it was fixed.
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But in fact, given opportunities through CUNY to be able to to get to bridge to promotional exams that pay much higher wages, to use, to work with CUNY, the agencies that need the staff and their unions to create those programs.
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What unions provide and have provided for years is tuition assistance that allows our members to go to go go to tuning schools.
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And our EEO case was one in large part because back in the eighties, we started a program with CUNY, with Queens College that gave our members the opportunity to get their degrees.
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And when we filed our EEO case, for administrative managers, we were able to show that our members, these women of color, had better educational credentials than the white male predecessors that used to work in those jobs.
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And because of that, we were able to win substantial increases for administrative managers.
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The paid disparity report came out of our EEO case.
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The legislation to create it was an acknowledgment of how women and people of color are ignored by decast and not given the opportunities to address.
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And even today, When our members or administrative managers are offered higher level positions, we often get reports that OMB is blocking the promotion of our members.
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Why?
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Because the pay scale is much higher after the EU case, and they don't want to pay it.
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Making sure that we continue to suppress the wages of women and people of color.
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Now we have other programs that are in in my risk written testimony.
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If you look at the para professional, the teacher program done done through the CUNY School of Labor And Urban Studies.
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You have para professionals We had to to negotiate the CUNY School of Labor Negotiated, programs at at various colleges throughout the CUNY system, where these para professionals could go to to could take these courses, in the afternoon have to work so that they could become teachers.
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That means that nearly doubling of their salaries.
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That is really an affirmative action program that offers women minorities a career path.
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And going forward, the opportunity to earn a master's degree plus credits, which will add to their salaries.
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These are life changing events and can play an important role in providing the city services that we need.
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The CUNY School of Labor And Urban Studies has done this for DC 37 for local 11 80.
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We do it day in and day out.
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The school is also talking about going into the high schools, and it's detailed in my in my report, in my testimony.
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All these are opportunities.
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To retain the women and minorities, the diverse workforce you have.
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I urge you to demand that not only do we deal with recruiting, but with retention, but that there'd be another key vehicle that offers opportunities where these students can come in at the lowest rings and move up and know that there is a path to the higher paying jobs.
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And with that, I'd be happy
Carmen De La Rosa
1:30:42
to questions that I that I Thank you so much for your meaningful testimony for providing us all of this information on which the committee will review fully.
