Photo of the Month Photo by Mark M. Kotzin CSEA members, activist, and Central Region President Colleen Wheaton took part in one of several Polar Plunges being held across the state to raise money for the Special Olympics. Plunges in Syracuse and Massena raised nearly $15,000. Visit https://cseany.org/the-2013-2014-seasonis here to find how you can join a team or contribute to help Special Olympians reach their dreams. Members are participating statewide. Member fatalities investigated CSEA is mourning the loss of two Staten Island Developmental Disabilities Services Office Local workers, who were struck and killed by a vehicle while crossing the street to get to the bus stop across from the group homes. Food Service Worker 2 Marion Anderson and Food Service Worker 3 Lizette Serrano were struck by a vehicle on Nov. 27, after staying late to help prepare a Thanksgiving meal. Local President Sheila Conroy met with local elected officials and vowed to continue working on safety improvements to avoid further injuries or deaths on the busy intersection. Workers have planned a demonstration at the site to raise awareness of the crossing’s dangers. Save the date! CSEA Statewide Conference on Occupational Safety and Health May 2-4, 2014 Lake Placid, N.Y. CSEA’s Statewide Conference on Occupational Safety and Health occurs every two years and is an opportunity for Occupational Safety and Health activists from across the state to learn the latest issues in occupational safety and health and bring that information to their workplaces to help keep all workers safe on the job. Backdoor outsourcing by Lottery leaves questions ALBANY — CSEA President Danny Donohue recently fired off a letter to several state legislators regarding ongoing and serious concerns with the New York State Lottery and a contract it has with the GTECH Corp. “Among other things, this contract ($25 million over five years) is an attempt at backdoor outsourcing of jobs at Lottery,” wrote Donohue. The $25 million GTECH contract created a pilot program that called for hiring private sector workers to do jobs identical to those of civil service workers at the Lottery Division. The state started the program in September 2012. Back then, CSEA questioned whether the deal was truly in the public interest. “In fiscal year 2011-12, the New York State Lottery was budgeted for 50 Lottery Representative positions that were never filled. These positions are revenue generating for the state,” wrote Donohue. Hiring just 20 state employees from the active civil service list would cost less than $1 million over the contract period. The original $25 million GTECH contract to hire about 20 workers was amended from two years to five years. GTECH, a private company owned by a foreign global conglomerate, already has $700 million worth of contracts with the state. It’s also a company that donated $40,000 to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign. Assemblyman Peter J. Abbate Jr., chair of the Assembly Government Employees Committee, also sent a letter to state Lottery brass demanding answers to several questions raised by this contract, including: 1) Why the agency needed to contract out Lottery Field Representative positions to a private contractor; 2) Why the agency felt a need to contract with a private vendor for services that were already being done successfully in house; 3) Whether the $58 million promised by GTECH in services rendered by GTECH employees had been realized; 4) Why the 50 approved Lottery positions approved for the 2011-12 fiscal year went unfilled. CSEA and state officials have still not gotten a response from Lottery officials. Donohue also sent a letter to Lottery employees summarizing CSEA’s attempts to address and find remedies for this situation. “I will continue to fight for state employment in your agency and will urge the politicians to take a closer look at what is going on at Lottery,” wrote Donohue. — David Galarza Persistently mentally ill officially on their own ALBANY — It’s official: New York state is leaving people with serious and persistent mental illness on their own under a new initiative that requires them to fend for themselves. The state Office of Mental Health is planning to move patients with serious mental illness out of state psychiatric centers and into Single Residency Occupancy (SRO) units throughout the state. SROs are private apartments where individuals would live on their own with minimal supervision from mental health professionals. “We’ve criticized the state on many occasions for not doing enough to care for the mentally ill,” said CSEA President Danny Donohue. “But now they’re officially leaving people with very serious illness on their own.” Patients currently in state psychiatric centers are among the most seriously ill. Many exhibit severe behavioral problems that can pose a serious risk to the community. In psychiatric centers, staff and treatment are available 24 hours a day. In SROs, however, individuals may only be visited by a mental health professional as little as once or twice a week. The union suspects the reasons behind the new initiative are financial rather than medical. It comes as the Cuomo administration is proposing to close state psychiatric centers from Long Island to Buffalo, and the union is skeptical that so many patients could somehow have been rehabilitated so suddenly. — Ed Molitor 2 The Work Force January 2014
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