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Friday, September 18, 2009

City worker talks Plan C
Fred Gigliotti

Fred Gigliotti is a social worker for the Office of Supportive Housing. He has two primary responsibilities: fielding complaints from shelter residents about conditions in homeless shelters, and working with individual residents to monitor their progress toward independent living. It’s been about a year since Fred started fearing for his job.

I first interviewed Fred for a piece I did for City Paper, profiling various city employees, outlining their responsibilities and their compensation. I knew he didn’t have a whole lot of seniority with the city — only about three years — and might be susceptible to being laid off, so I decided to call him this morning to see how he was taking the news about Plan C being averted.

Fred confirmed that he’d been nervous.

“I felt as far as my job, there were a lot of unknowns. You didn’t know for sure who was affected … I have a lot at stake. Not only a mortgage to pay and bills, but grad school.” Fred is working toward his Master’s in Social Work at Temple, and one of the requirements is a “field placement.” Fred was doing his through the city. Were he to be laid off, he might not finish that placement. He’d lose about a year of work, and suffer a major setback en route to his master’s.

“Emotionally, that did affect me. Having that hanging over the back of your head can put a toll on somebody.”

Fred’s department had already suffered from the last round of cuts. No one had been laid off, but positions were eliminated, and people who retired weren’t replaced. “We’re starting to feel the effects of not replacing positions,” he says. This made life harder at the shelters. “When you don’t have case managers at a shelter, it’s really hard to move people forward.”

He and his co-workers figured that everything dispensable had been cut, and if Plan C happened, there would be some real damage. There’s been a lot of discussion around these parts lately of how real “Plan C” ever was. This much is for sure: It was real for Fred. “I believed the mayor,” he says. He says he doesn’t agree with everything Nutter’s done, but has sympathy for the spot he’s in.

Last Tuesday, the public sector unions took some members, including Fred, to Harrisburg, to fight against the pension amendments attached by the State Senate to the Philly relief bill. Fred decided to fight for this job, rather than try to make other plans, because he wasn’t even sure what other plans to make. “It’s not like there’s a lot of jobs out there,” he says. Throughout the week, he and his co-workers followed the developments — every delay in Harrisburg, every warning from the mayor — with baited breath. Yesterday afternoon, when the State Senate finally passed the relief bill and did away with Plan C, Fred was out in the field, and in the evening he went to the Phillies game. He didn’t get the good news until he picked up a paper this morning.

His final thought, for now: “It’s a good day.”
Posted by Doron Taussig @ 12:10 PM  Permalink | 5 comments
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:19 PM, 09/18/2009
    It's great to see the story of a real City employee who works hard in the trenches everyday. Most of the time the press, and especially the commenters to these articles, portray City workers as cartoon characters who, if laid off, essentially disappear off the face of the earth. My thoughts: Thanks Fred for all the hard work you and your co-workers do for all of us, and for keeping Philly a civilized place. Some day we'll all realize how much more important to our real living world you are than the bankers, bond dealers and other paper shufflers in corporate America that the press generally venerates. And you'll be compensated accordingly.
    — Stan Shapiro
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:05 PM, 09/18/2009
    The city can't continue to exist with 23,000 employees in a city smaller than Phoenix, AZ. There are employees who are needed, but there are a lot who are not, and are hangovers from the patronage machine. These are typically un/under educated workers with out of date skills who are hanging until their DROP or as long as possible, when a kid out of college could do a better job for the taxpayer. There are row offices to be trimmed, and huge departments that perform redundant tasks that are duplicated at other agencies. We can't afford to be all things to all people, and when the bill comes due for the deferred pension plan, we'll see again what that means. Layoffs to get us through the next few years are still very likely.
    — CleanupPhilly
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:14 PM, 09/18/2009
    There won't be this fully funded budget just because we have a sales tax hike. The amount the hike brings in is unknown, and already the press has revised the figure down from $12 million a month to $10 million a month. I'm planning to do more shopping online to avoid the WHOLE sales tax. It's cheaper to pay for it to be delivered, and more convenient. This is how elastic demand is. This is the point -- for the short benefit of deferral of pension payments and a small sales tax hike that can only be used for pensions after December, the city has this mandated debt with interest that the state can now enforce payment of by withholding money from the state to the city. It would have been advisable to read the bill before claiming that the Plan C "Doomsday" plan was really 1. true 2. real or 3. worth it. In a lot of ways, Nutter got pension reform by crying "doomsday" and still has to make plenty of adjustments to the still unbalanced budget.
    — CleanupPhilly
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:44 PM, 09/18/2009
    Nutter still doesn't have a plan as to how to pay for his government, but how not to pay for his government.
    — CleanupPhilly
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:59 PM, 09/18/2009
    Freddie G is the man! This guy would have the homeless live with him and his wife if the shelters closed down, a la "You, Me and Dupree" style! everyone who knows this man, loves this man! He ought to be paid 6 figures in a fair society!
    — brewgrass


5 comments
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Every year, city government spends slightly more than $4 billion. Where does all that money come from? More importantly, where does it go? Are we getting the most bang for our tax buck? “It's Our Money” is a joint project between Philadelphia Daily News and WHYY, funded by the William Penn Foundation, designed to answer these questions.




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