Grants employees in labor class positions rights with regards to the suspension or demotion upon abolition or reduction of certain positions

BILL NUMBER:S5708

Title of bill

An act to amend the civil service law, in relation to layoff and recall rights and disciplinary hearings for certain employees in the non-competitive and labor class

Purpose

This bill would provide disciplinary hearings for non-competitive class employees and labor class employees after one year of service. By doing so, it would afford section seventy-five rights (due process protections) to such employees. This bill would also provide layoff and recall protections for noncompetitive class employees and labor class employees after one year of service.

Summary of provisions

This bill would:

* Revise the current law which provides disciplinary due process rights for non-competitive class employees other than those who hold a position designated as confidential or perform functions influencing policy, after five years of service, to afford such hearing rights after one year of service.

* Revise the current law to provide disciplinary due process rights for labor class employees after one year of service.

* Revise the current law which provides layoff protections for non-competitive class employees other than those who hold a position designated as confidential or perform functions influencing policy, who work in the state service only, after five years of service, to all jurisdictions and after one year of service.

* Revise the current law to provide layoff protections for labor class employees after one year of service.

Existing law

Section 1c of the current law provides hearing rights to non-competitive class employees other than those non-competitive employees who hold a position designated as confidential or requiring the performance of functions influencing policy, once they have completed five years of continuous service. There is no comparable right for labor class employees. Section 80a of the current law provides layoff protections to non-competitive class employees other than those non-competitive employees who hold a position designated as confidential or requiring the performance of functions influencing policy, once they have completed five years of continuous service. There is no comparable protection for labor class employees.

Justification

Section 65, Paragraph 5 was added to the civil service law in order to provide a plan to reduce the number of provisional employees in the City of New York. The Plan included scheduling of civil service examinations as well as "any other lawful and appropriate means of implementation." One method of implementation

that the City is using to reduce provisional employees is to simply reclassify competitive class titles into non-competitive class or labor class titles. The consequence of these reclassifications, if they meet the approval of the New York state Civil Service Commission, is that employees, who continue to do the same work they had done before as, competitive class employees, will lose the rights and benefits they would accrue as competitive civil servants. The purpose of this legislation is to give non-competitive class and labor class employees, the same disciplinary hearing rights as well as the same layoff and recall rights that competitive civil servants receive.

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

Immediately.