>In one of the most dramatic examples, the comptroller’s report found a nearly 47% vacancy rate in the city’s Department of Social Services’ Child Support Services division, which administers programs that impact one in seven New Yorkers under 18.

>The Department of Social Services, as well as the Administration for Children’s Services, were among the agencies cited as having multiple units with more than 30% vacancy rates.

>Lander said he was also concerned about the risk of cyber attacks on the city. His office found a 36% vacancy rate within the unit that administers the city’s so-called “cyber command” center.

All of this (edit: by "this" I mean difficulty recruiting vacancies) because Eric Adams is personally refusing to allow hybrid work in any city office. The buck stops with him on this foolishness. Would allowing some office workers to have schedule flexibility 1-2 times a week cause everything to fall apart? Really? They already are paid terribly. It's the absolute least they could do for little to no cost.

Here's the report if you're curious

Neither is serious in solving the issue. Anyone who can jump ship will.

My shocked face 😐

Someone really needs to explain to me the mentality that people who can do their jobs fine from home must come into an office. I don't want some nonsensical corporate speak that sounds like it came from Scientology - I mean the real reason.

You would think the guy from Jersey would understand how much traveling sucks

Comptrollers can only do the research, get the data and make report. We don't really have a mechanism for them to step in and take over when our Mayoral administration and City Council refuse to, unfortunately.

Allow hybrid

If you have friends who are invested in commercial real estate, then you need your office workers in the office to keep up appearances.

I get that but I think his research is just surface level stuff focusing on hybrid work. That might help but it’s not the main thing. Public employees are paid lower then private sector and wages have fallen. They were behind the cost of living before COVID and the inflation crisis now they are just not worth it

He doesn’t address the crappy tier 6 pension formula which falls most under his control or prose ways to improve future retirement for new employees

He doesn’t address the lack of promotions or the out of date and inadequate civil service test process.

Doesn’t address health benefits and is just rolling with Adams on cutting them for retirees and current employees.

There’s no bright side to these jobs anymore. No one wants a job that doesn’t benefit in anyway.

Did you read the report? He mentions hybrid as one of the options at the end but the entire report is just showing the statistics of people who left and what departments and for what apparent reasons.

This is actually very little about hybrid on its own and more about the city having difficulty recruiting (bad pay, no flex) and the mayor's office single-handedly deciding to eliminate positions and not make it easier to recruit. Even if we didn't reinstate the cut positions, the Mayor could single handedly fix the recruiting issue. He refuses to.

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City gets money from property tax, sales tax and business tax. No business = no tax.

Some of us are staying put.

Yikes. I wonder how many candidates drop out between getting an offer and being onboarded because it takes so long. I've heard up to 6 months for some!

Exactly. Adams needs New Yorkers to continue buying $20 salads in midtown to keep his real estate donors happy. The man is incredibly short sighted and self interested. I really hope as New Yorkers we can galvanize behind whoever will be opposing him in the primary.

If the City wanted to fix the issue of losing property tax from businesses in Manhattan they should request landlords lower rents and make it more enticing to stay or to rent space there for smaller businesses. Sometimes private business owners are smart. Why would they waste their $$ on bloated Manhattan rent when staff don't even want to be there? Who does that benefit except the rent collectors? Why is the City (well, the Mayor) the last one to understand this?

I agree with you in spirit, but there's a bit of a problem : Manhattan has sort of specialized in being the McLargeHuge commercial real estate capital of the country. It's very hard to repurpose that.

There's also the fact that financials and their involvement of commercial real estate means there's incentives (as in, actual contractual incentives for primary stakeholders) to never lower the rates on leases. Senior holders and all that. It's all very arcane, just like just about everything in commercial real estate.

Many. The months and months of waiting is a got damned farce.

Our new ranked-choice primary system delivered us Eric Adams.

I'm not sure we will ever find a future for the McLargeHuge commercial space. They need to make a decision now on whether to lower rents or remodel spaces.

Just an anecdote of course, but the massive quarter block office building I see out my office window has at least 5 gutted floors. It used to be cubicle farms top to bottom for a bank, I believe. It's been emptied out since late 2019 (started pre-COVID) and not a bit of movement there yet. As the Mega Corps leave to save $$ and keep staff happy, who else would ever come and claim that overpriced space? They're going to have to convert it no matter what, whether it's into smaller offices on the same floor or into housing. I don't know why the Mayor is leading them on and wasting time.

>Someone really needs to explain to me the mentality that people who can do their jobs fine from home must come into an office.

At the risk of being swarmed, I will give it a shot.

The mayor is responsible for the city as a collective. He has to balance competing interests and priorities. That doesn't mean he's doing a good job of it, but that is technically his job.

For the health of the city - financial, social, cultural - it is valuable to have people working in the city because that leads to dollars being directly injected into the NYC economy. Nearly one million people commuted into NYC every day. They would spend money at drug stores, local retail, local restaurants. With WFH, that money is staying in New Jersey and Westchester and Long Island.

And that might be the future, but it's going to cause financial and social issues for New York City. Less money injected into the economy = less tax collection and that's less money for schools, parks and public services like transit. These are just the facts.

At the individual level, it is totally reasonable, understandable and justifiable to want to work from home. I work from home 3 or 4 days a week myself and I don't feel like going into the office. I'm not quite sure that's sustainable at the civic level. We are eventually going to run out of resources.

Now my suggestion is that we ultimately need to allow government employees to WFH a few days a week just to keep talent and keep morale high. But it is a tough trade off, and keeping individuals happy will have ramifications for the collective. My follow up suggestion to this is for the city of NY to commit to developing 500K housing units over the next 10 years. We can limit the impact of WFH by offsetting with a growing population.

"Adams has exacerbated", fill in the blank... this can be a headline for the ages.

One of the hardest things to do on this sub is to explain to people that not every problem is caused by evil people doing obviously evil things that could be magically solved with the wave of someone's hands.

The NYC is built the way it is, for better or worse, mostly better considering how prosperous the city is. To expect this behemoth of a city to just magically adapt to the new normal is asking a lot.

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>I'm not quite sure that's sustainable at the civic level. We are eventually going to run out of resources.

?????

Okay, let's start from the beginning. Did you understand the part where I described how commuters into the city inject money into the local economy through spending?

And what if nobody moves in and pays the rent?

It's not going to magically adapt, we all agree. We need a City government that is practical and responsive to change and to plan ahead. We don't have that. It'll come back to bite us in the ass.

It is not uncommon for city job candidates to take another job while you wait, the process can take THAT long it's ridiculous. You might even find something better in the mean time lol..

Really?? Lmao, fuck your condescension. You made a statement without anything to back it up. Which civic resources, specifically, are we going to run out of?

The MTA may be crying about lost revenue due to ridership being down, but the fact is that there are plenty of people coming in to the office at least one day a week and tourists are back en force. The city isn't dying or in danger of losing any sector or service. It's readjusting, if anything.

Just for some perspective, the 2022 authorized headcount is 337,294. The comptroller reports 8% vacancy, meaning there are actually ~310,310 employees.

That is roughly the same number that was authorized for 2016, and 17k more employees than the recent low of 2012.

https://cbcny.org/research/nyc-employee-headcount

Another public sector entity I know has an average recruitment time of 9 months. People I have known received job offers months after forgetting about applying.

> Really?? Lmao, fuck your condescension. You made a statement without anything to back it up.

What exactly do you need back up for. Do you understand the concept or not?

>Which civic resources, specifically, are we going to run out of?

Economic Revenue to businesses and employees in this city; Tax Revenue.

>The MTA may be crying about lost revenue due to ridership being down, but the fact is that there are plenty of people coming in to the office at least one day a week and tourists are back en force.

No, the fact is that MTA ridership is down 30-40% and it is not sustainable to keep up operations at the same level. So the city and state will need to make a big decision on how they are gong to fix that gap.

> It's readjusting, if anything.

Okay, and the readjustment will be toward lower investment into public services. And that trade off might be worth it if most people are just sitting at home anyways.

my bf was interviewing with the city for like 2.5 months. he ultimately accepted another job

There are an unprecedented amount of vacancies, but the city is using this unfortunate opportunity to get rid of some position altogether to save money, so some jobs will never come back. To use Adam’s own words the city is “in trouble” financially. For the vacancies they want to fill it’s difficult for multiple reasons. The rigid old school policies, especially regarding hybrid work, the cost of living in NYC is atrocious and the pay of most city jobs remains ever more stagnant, often a manager job at McDonald’s will pay more than what many city positions pay. Furthermore, attempts to strip health benefits from NYC retirees and pin them against current city workers reveals the Ponzi scheme. The city works on a tier system, and benefits are stripped away from new city workers, It’s an absolute mess of red tape, inadequacy and bad circumstances exacerbated by COVID.

I work with the city as a contractor and it was a nightmare to get anyone on the phone. Now I’d be better off using a ouija board. We are going to lose a lot of talent if we can’t work with the city and the recipients continue to suffer. This is not attractive to out of state businesses and NYC has historically been difficult to deal with in many areas. It’s really sad. But we did get marijuana and a response method to mental health issues at least. He’s 1/4 the way though his term here, let’s go. Do something

Commercial landlords gave a lot of money to the Adams campaign so he is doing everything in his power to keep office rents high

Valuation is based on listed rent, not actual rent.

True. And property is valued based on cash flow. Paper cash flow or actual cash flow are the same. So in a spreadsheet somewhere someone said it is worth 100 a foot in rent, and was sold as such. And they guy who bought it says it is 110 a foot and got a loan based on that. If someone moves in under 110 the bank repossesses his building or it just sits vacant for 12 years. Which one will he do?

NYS dems and NYC dems are su corrupt and inept. I am pissed that there was a red wave in my state by Dems had it coming. Why cant New York dems get their shit together and be more like California democrats.

300k workers is an insane number. Maybe less is more in a system described as this terrible

Adams forbid any WFH when nearly every other public employer in the city offers some version of it (even MTA which is usually pretty conservative in management). Hundres of people have jumped ship to provide sector or other public agencies where they can keep WFH and probably make more money.

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Uh no. Adams was leading after the first round so he would have won under the traditional system. The ranked choice system allowed Garcia to come very close to overtaking him.

Part of the issue is that NYC insists on handing shitloads of government services at the city level.

Something no other city in the country does.

Half this shit should exclusively be handled at the state level

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I. DRINK. TAP. WATER. IT. IS. OKAY. AND. DEFINITELY. NOT. UNFIT. FOR. CONSUMPTION.

Allow remote work period too! Most of these jobs don’t require being in an office. My SIL works in government housing (different state) and she works 100% remote.

Most people who remain as city employees are only there because they are a few years from retirement and it makes sense to stay.

City is fucked if it doesn’t fix this really really quick. The city hemorrhages employees for years and it accelerated. Lost knowledge, capacity won’t come back anytime soon.

Your not preventing problems now. You’re only trying to soften them.

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Unfortunately a big chunk of the city's taxes come from either taxes on commercial real estate or from businesses that basically exist solely to serve 9-5 office workers.

Short of singlehandedly changing the economy of the city in a 4 year term, I don't know what you expect from Adams. I work from home and would love to continue doing so in perpetuity but the house of cards that is our city has been built with the assumption that people will be in offices.

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Former employee of the New York City Mayor's Office of Management and Budget here. I'd like to take some time to shed light on current recruitment and retention issues that municipal employers in NYC are now facing, how we got to this point and possible solutions.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a whistle blower. Everything that I am about to state is public knowledge. I am simply conveying my perspective as an individual who was responsible for overseeing the hiring decisions of several City agencies.

First are foremost, the City of New York is flirting with a massive budget gap in the next few fiscal years. I don't think its incredibly controversial to highlight the effect that COVID policy had on the City's finances. A massive black swan event and cultural shift was not included in the City's budgeting forecasting in 2019...obviously.

In order for the City to have a balanced budget, the Expense budget must be equal to the Revenue Budget. The Expense budget is comprised of operating expenditures such as salaries, overtime, equipment, supplies, contracts etc. While the Revenue budget is a reflection, and future forecasting, of all of the revenues the City will collect in a given fiscal year, such as sales tax, property tax, income tax, transportation fares, fines, fees, forfeiture, State and Federal grant funding etc. Since COVID the actual and forecasted future City revenues have plummeted, leaving the City in a deficit. In order to plug this hole the Federal government has stepped in and provided States, including NY, with funding to help bridge budgetary gaps. This funding is billed as revenue as used by OMB and the agencies to schedule out payments for operating expenses that the City would otherwise not be able to pay for. The problem is that in the next few fiscal years this funding is running out. Leaving the City with a gaping hole in its budget.

There are only two ways to bridge a budget gap. Either increase revenues, which is unlikely given the current economic conditions or cut expenditures. What is the City's biggest overhead you ask....salaries. Salaries can't be lowered due to protections from collective bargaining agreements. These agreements also protect employees from mass layoffs/firings.

So, why are there large numbers of vacancies you ask? In short, it is the intent of the City to gradually lower the number of City employees.

How are they doing so?

• 2 for 1 Hiring Freeze
  • Citywide policy requires agencies to abide by guidelines which only allow them to hire one employee after two separate service. This creates artificial vacancies and ensure that agencies will never be a full headcount.
• Budget Cuts
  • During budget planning, because of the 2 for 1 hiring freeze, agencies have a number of vacancies. OMB will then pressure agencies to cut vacancies which they cannot fill, thus lowering the City's operating budget.
• OMB Oversight of Agency Hires
  • OMB micromanages agency hires. Virtually all of the relevant data in regards to new hires and promotions is scrutinized. Agencies do not have the full discretion to make hiring decisions related to proposed salaries, promotions, title and rate of hire etc. All of these decisions are made by OMB and are designed to offer the bare minimum so the City doesn't accrue as much in salary expenses. This process is done monthly and can take additional months before an analysis and approval is complete, therefore delaying the hiring process and leading candidates to accept other more lucrative offers elsewhere.
• No WFH Options
  • Enough said. The City is experiencing unprecedented rates of attrition due to the fact that they cannot compete with employers in the private sector. Private sector institutions are offering higher salaries, WFH/Hybrid models, better opportunity for advancement, more PTO and more comfortable workloads due to proper staffing. Due to the factors listed above, the City is also having difficulty hiring. Just as current employees are making this assessment and leaving, prospective employees are looking from the outside in and doing the same. There's just not enough people who want to do the work.

What are some possible solutions?

Some obvious solutions would be a WFH/Hybrid option, higher salaries and expedited hiring process. But I believe I did a decent job explaining why the City DOES NOT want that to happen and how they benefit from lowering headcount amongst the workforce. Quite simply, its by design.

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NYC: it’s fine we can tax our way out of mismanagement!

OMB approval expires after six months - stay in touch with your contact so you don't get fucked again, mate.

Good thing we've got a new Mayor working hard in the trenches and getting stuff done!

also /s

We have almost 9 million residents and millions more who come to the city every day as tourists or to work here. That isn't an insane number to staff all the different things the city is taking care of at the same time. Like trash, public parks, licenses, zoning, police, fire, etc. Etc.

>Half this shit should exclusively be handled at the state level

What do you think the state should be handling that NYC is currently managing?

Are you a new entrant to this field or do you have marketable experience? Because if it’s the latter, I’d highly advise you to keep applying at private companies. Working for the city will kill your soul and is a huge trap unless you’re ready to throw in the towel and give up

>But we did get marijuana

That was a state law, the Mayor had nothing to do with that.

>response method to mental health issues at least.

We didn't get that. He announced it a few days ago with absolutely no staffing or budget to make it happen. It's also likely illegal and will be tossed anyway. His intent was to make a big new splash for the holiday tourist season, that isn't a real policy.

There are no city offices working from home. It's not allowed. There is a miniscule amount of people granted medical WFH exemptions, but that's a blip. Whoever told you that was full of it.

How many cities in the US are as big as New York City? And like what kind of things should be handled at the state level vs city level?

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I straight up don't trust government pensions moving forward. My mother was a severely underpaid paraprofessional for more than 20 years, then she took a different job that paid far better but wasn't government, but in the last few years she took another government job that pays much more than she did as a paraprofessional. She had to fight with a bunch of admin fucks because they were basically saying that because she went to a private job(for a public institution)for a few years that she would effectively be treated as a new employee and her time building her pension as a para wouldn't count.

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Got’em

I think this is a pretty balanced take on the issue. With prices being what they are, I like the idea of saving money by staying home more days. So maybe if we didn't make midtown unaffordable more people might show up more often.

That’s really unfortunate. I’m sorry that happened to your mother. Your mom should consult with a lawyer who handles these things. She paid into that pensions as a paraprofessional they can’t just take the money from her like that.

In essence, the vacancy issue is going as planned. I highly doubt the City will implement any WFH solutions and the City will be hesitant to increase wages for the foreseeable future unless something catastrophic happens. However, the consequences of this is that it will continue to be drained of talent.

They aren't. There is no city office allowing work from home. That is absolutely false. Unless they have a building emergency like bed bugs (lol that happens a lot) and they shut it down for a week while they fumigate. Or unless he's referring to offices that aren't city workers (like comptroller, borough president, state offices, etc.)

The irony is that despite the Mayor obviously trying to reduce headcount on purpose, he's simultaneously promising agency plans to promise higher productivity and new programs. But there's nobody to run the programs or hit those numbers. You can't cut city offices and then demand massive speed improvements and more services to the public. They lost massive amounts of institutional knowledge that ran those programs. Public services, especially social services, will suffer. He just refuses to acknowledge that.

Unfortunately that's called politics my friend, and a large reason as to why I left.

She got it corrected she just had to advocate for herself in a way that I think a lot of people wouldn't. Basically the actual way they do the math to find our final pension changed at some point, so if you were hired before a certain date you kept the old pension calculation but if you were hired after they used a different calculation the made your pension less.

They claimed that because she had a gap in employment that her pension would be calculated with the new lesser calculation, rather than the better calculations from her first job in the early 90's.

So it wasn't that they were negating her time as a para, they were making a claim that because she was re-hired that she was only able to claim benefits with a newer crappier calculation.

Oh, I know. I. Know.

Which is why I'll always regret Kathryn Garcia not winning. Electeds don't understand how the city works (truly, many of them have no idea how anything works) and often treat staff with contempt. She actually had experience as a real city agency staffer who understood what works and what doesn't. Eric Adams and perpetual elected officials use city workers as pawns, they don't really care about how things work or whether things break when they're term limited out.

OTI?

Not only a NYC issue either. Seen it happen in both public and private sectors where they post a job before they have approval.

One gets funded by federal grants, the other (people) needs to be funded by operational budget.

There is so much waste in the federal grant system. If I became dictator tomorrow I would end all grant money immediately.

You're on the right track there.

Having worked for both the legislative and executive branches of government I can attest to the fact that most elected officials have no idea what's going on at a macro scale.

Once confronted with the complexity of intergovernmental affairs and policy issues they realize their campaign promises probably aren't as realistic as they thought them to be.

Do you see any future for those of us employed with the city who aren’t looking to leave?

If you are comfortable with mediocrity then yes. But if you have higher aspirations I would recommend looking elsewhere.

The City does not care about you. It does not care about your financial well being, your mental health or your life and priorities outside of work.

All of which would be better off by leaving City service for other government entities, non-profits or the private sector.

The thing is I feel like I’d be trading up a low workload and benefits and security for a private org that’ll care equally little about me.

Union just met with them and he’s not budging.

At least start the process of weaning us off of that revenue stream. Vacancy taxes and higher taxes on the rich would help.

What about DSNY?

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> Economic Revenue to businesses and employees in this city; Tax Revenue.

So find new sources of that. We have the most billionaires in the world. I’d say start there.

>state and federal agencies

...this is about city agencies. And you can look up salaries online for every city employee. They are not overpaid. And don't bother yelling about how the mayoral appointed positions are paid, because they aren't civil or public servants.

>Once confronted with the complexity of intergovernmental affairs

...They pass a local law requiring a Task Force and the creation of a new agency/department that is supposed to wrangle information from every agency that inevitably does a bad job because it's staffed by people who themselves also don't understand how the city works. It's a tale as old as time.

City workers are legally required to live in the city. I’m sure some commit fraud but for the most part, that money was not staying in NJ.

Maybe the mayor should require more city workers who can work from home, to work from an office.

This has been pointed out so many times that people are leaving because city work pays little, taking away something that was working for 3 years because of some bullshit to get asses in seats made many more people reconsider working for the city.

Nobody wants the commute. Lower rent wouldn't help with that.

Non profits that pay executives really well and the average worker shit you mean?

DOE teachers don't need to live in NYC.

I did not know that. Makes sense that teachers would have to work in person anyway.

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For most city jobs, being a civil servant is not something to be proud about. Most people who work for the city dont do it because they want to serve the government- that is like a lie you tell yourself to justify lower pay and worse perks. Most people work for the city because they could not find better jobs or they wanted to coast in life with an easy job. Many of the people you work with aren't great at their jobs and don't really care about their jobs and it's not surprising why given that the salary and perks are so low.

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The real reason is that if people stop coming into Manhattan, commercial real estate prices will drop, and real estate developers are big donors to politicians like Adams who is willing to do them favors like ordering folks back to midtown.

Yet they still won’t hire my ass

I can just tell you regularly yell at service staff everywhere you go. What a wild generalization about hundreds of thousands of workers who clean up after your ass all day on one way or another.

You think city workers become state and federal workers because the city gets state and federal budget? Are you for real? This was a wild reach to not admit you were wrong about the types of public workers we are talking about. City workers aren't just state and federal workers who live in NYC.

It is a generalization that is why I said "most city jobs." Certainly not all city workers are lazy. I used to work for the city and I personally hated it. My coworkers openly stated that they preferred working for the city because they wanted an easier job and don't care about money. I used to be praised by my coworkers for how smart I was and how fast I worked- in truth my coworkers were just a lot slower than me and didn't work as hard. It is also harder to fire incompetent employees which is also why city jobs generally have more lazy employees. I didn't feel proud that I was working for the city job and contributed so much when I was getting paid so little and everyone else around me weren't taking their jobs as seriously while getting paid the same.

47% of NYC revenue comes from property tax. As someone else said vacancy tax is a big one. And letting the free market do it’s work, the city needs to evolve with us. If people work from home more and eat at home we have to built communities and businesses around that. And make midtown residential, create parks. But Eric Adams is not a long term planner, he is more focused on slashing jobs, investing 5.5 million into a hip hop museum, partying with his friends, and campaigning for his 2025 race. What I want is for him to make concrete plans for how we will bring the city with us forward, instead of just strictly holding us in the past of pre pandemic times without any debate or negotiation.

That’s empirically incorrect. What got us Eric Adams is the abysmal voter turnout in New York City, in a large part thanks to the board of elections. Only 23% of voters voted for eric adams. Only 12% of voters showed up for Deblasios reelection! The problem is we don’t show up and we end up with politicians that don’t actually represent voters.

I recognize you're playing devil's advocate here to some extent, so please don't take this as trying to jump on you. I'm just a teensy bit angry about the way the discourse has shaken out in the media.

I think it's disingenuous to suggest that the ~80,000 NYC employees who could work from home make that much of a difference. First, those employees are spread throughout multiple locations across the city - yes, there's a few major offices at Metrotech and in FiDi, but the city has office buildings all over. Just having city employees back is not going to save much of anything because the difference is so small. Second, Most of them would still have to live within the city anyway, so the city is still getting property and sales taxes from them.

"But city employees set an example to private industry" say de Blasio and Adams, to which I say bullshit. City employees are universally looked down on by private industry and public discourse. I would argue that is unjust in most cases, but I challenge anyone to find an example of a hot shit tech firm or a major bank saying "I wish our employees were more like city employees." You'll never find it. Instead you will find countless stories of how city employees are lazy and incompetent. The banks and investment firms and other private employers were always going to do their own thing and whether or not city employees were working from home was never going to make one iota of difference to their managements' decisions.

It kills me that for a brief minute workers in non-union office jobs had that moment of "Fuck you I'm not going back" and it's not turning into a massive labor movement, but here we are.

Edit: 100% on board with your housing suggestion. That's (among other things) one way to make the city more affordable and keep tax revenue up. Hell, I would go even further and suggest public housing that actually has the funding to stay maintained. Fold taxes and rent into a single income stream - you can keep the rents relatively low and the city gets more money out of it to pay for maintenance.

Why not convert some of the empty commercial buildings to residential? This would alleviate the housing shortage while bringing more people into the city. More people living in the communities will bring in more tax revenue and businesses to cater to those new residents. More people in the city that can use public transportation and also minimize the amount of cars and traffic in the city. Would allow for more public servants to live in the communities they serve.

>I recognize you're playing devil's advocate here to some extent, so please don't take this as trying to jump on you. I'm just a teensy bit angry about the way the discourse has shaken out in the media.

How has the discourse shaken out in the media.

I don't think I'm trying to play devil's advocate here. I'm just pointing out that WFH has major trade offs that simply need to be considered. People on this sub absolutely refuse the consider trade offs in all the things they demand.

>"But city employees set an example to private industry" say de Blasio and Adams, to which I say bullshit. City employees are universally looked down on by private industry and public discourse.

I disagree. I think it is about building credibility. It is harder to convincingly argue that working in office is important if you are telling your own employees that they don't need to come into the office. Note, my personal stance here is to push for a hybrid model.

> It kills me that for a brief minute workers in non-union office jobs had that moment of "Fuck you I'm not going back" and it's not turning into a massive labor movement, but here we are.

Massive labor movement? . . . The primary beneficiaries of work from home were upscale, educated white collar professionals. Do you think blue collar and service sector workers view white collar professionals as compatriots in class solidarity? Because I can tell you they do not. They look at us as spoiled brats who reaped a massive advantage during covid, lecturing others from behind a computer screen while their own suffered and had to go into work in person. Construction workers, small business owners, maintenance workers, healthcare workers . . . what do these people have to gain from a work-from-home strike?

We should all have the dignity to admit that work from home is an incredibly privilege afforded to upscale white collar professionals and no one else. Whether we earned it or not, the truth of the matter is that we have that bargaining power and it just is what it is. Nobody has to apologize for it. But let's stop pretending that a bunch of six figure earners are Haymarket protestors.

What the fuck does this even mean. You need a news source to understand how consumer spending drives the economy of this city? You can't just use simple logic?

What does the existence of billionaires have to do with the general economy of the city? Do you think the number of billionaires in a city impacts spending at the local bodega, local restaurants, local drugstores? Do you think billionaires are just a magic source of money for everything the city wants to accomplish?

Curious to hear your thoughts - what makes the non government entities superior?

The big issue imo is that pretty much all solutions one can work towards would not see clear results for several years making it useless in the eyes of any elected official.

Why would they do the work of enacting policy the next guy will get all the credit for?

Frankly i have no hope of any politician from any party to not solely act in their own self interest

No most of them arent.

Ok I googled it and looks like most are allowed to live in 6 NYS counties outside of NYC after being a city worker for 2 years. But not NJ. Would be curious to know what percentage of city workers live outside of NYC.

Depends on the individual agency

A lot dont have that 2 year requirement

It has nothing with anyone being able to do their job well or even delivering the service. It's all about us paying MTA and paying for carbs throughout the day and spend money on nonessentials. Nothing more. Nothing less. There has been no bigger "fuck you" to how much my job doesnt matter than that of the response of the Adams administration.

Agreed. City staff see the vision over time between administrations and do a lot of work. Then a new administration begins and they scrap the work and restart something that gets dropped again later. Very rarely do they promote agency staff into commissioner positions. Instead the pick their friends who have little to no experience and are starting from scratch.

It's very hard to have consistency and a cohesive vision for the public when politicians only hop in to promote their own agenda.

DC37?

wouldn't be surprised since it's adams anyways but my cousin's been keeping in touch with her union rep and they've only been repeating that they're going to the table seriously starting next year

DC37 member here. Yep, Adams is holding firm on the no telework policy.

Idk the internet says most do have the requirement so who do I believe lol

Nypd, DOE, sanitation, FDNY court officer, corrections…. Lot of city jobs that dont include that requirement

Adaptability.

Government entities are usually much slower to adapt. Because there are few metrics one can use to analyze the "productivity" of a government org, its difficult to highlight successes and failures. And even then those are subject to misrepresentation by campaigns, media etc.

Thus, governments become a breeding ground for career bureaucrats who continuously pull the levers of power in the wrong direction. You cant get rid of them because they are either elected and aren't going anywhere for the next 2-4 years or they are appointed govt officials (commissioners, directors etc) and are covered by collective bargaining agreements so they aren't getting fired.

I understand that issue, but how does directly affect me?

figures, he probably thinks that getting anyone to voluntarily quit will help ease the budget now and whatever happens later is someone else's problem

sucks for my cousin, she's not close to be vested for any retirement benefit, but at the same time she's probably stayed too long and her resume with a city job is not going to be as attractive as a fresh grad for any entry level finance position

The effect that a dysfunctional organization has on its employees is similar to the impact a dysfunctional family has on its children.

And you haven’t found that in other sectors? You seem very knowledgeable and I’m just trying to weigh my options.

I understand for some jobs the government will never be able to compete with the private sector, but they are letting engineers for example leave city employment left and right. They end up going private but it's the city that awards contracts to those private companies, so essentially they end up paying the person who just left the city a higher salary to work someplace else.

I've never worked in govt but the op's descriptions sound similar to family owned(or majority share) companies Ive worked for. In addition to being stingy with pay and employee career training, it was a toxic environment. Many companies have toxic environments also but a decent company will adjust or at least recognize the balance of keeping employees happy and productive or at least the pay and experience is market rate. Below average pay and experience will hurt you longer term than a stable job in a low pay and toxic environment where leadership is unaccountable

I’m trying to make sense of your last sentence - are you advocating for or against government work?

Most corporations are made up of people who also worked their way up so they more likely to care to varying degrees about employee satisfaction. If pay is too low and doesn't adjust, you're also facing being affected by toxic culture and skill atrophy. In addition I don't know what NYC rules are on unpaid overtime, if you get into that situation you're basically working for free. The only situation I can see that would work is if you're disabled or physically unhealthy to work most jobs, if you can get a union desk job it might be tough for the city to fire you.

It sounds like NYC jobs would be ideal if you have health issues. If the pay is too low and doesn't rise much it's worst than having to bounce around companies. Also job skill atrophy and danger of adopting toxic culture as a norm. Most companies aren't the stereotypical founder/owner driven fiefdoms, they're staffed by people who also know what's it like to be an employee and care about employee satisfaction to a degree.

It almost sounds like NYC setting itself up to outsource more operations. The common refrain before such happens is that there's not enough skilled employees and it will fit the budget

Sounds like a setup for future outsourcing or subcontracting government operations. "Smaller govt"

In terms of working for NYC gov, against unless you have no other options. I wouldn't be surprised if Adams started outsourcing govt jobs, as increasing employee attrition ignoring morale while increasing pursuit of pet projects is usually a pretext to outsource jobs

Thank you for offering up your thoughts. It’s definitely something I will take into consideration as I begin to look for work again.

I've been helping some people out with advice. Basically despite the drop in stock and real estate values, they still represent the only investment paths for financial security in retirement. But to invest you need spare finances. It sounds like city pay is so low that you may wind up broke or in debt by the time your pensions kick in at retirement.maybe it's ok if your spouse gets a city job while your job is the main income. In addition health care benefits are a big target for the city to cut costs. But outside of your finances, it's important to build up your skill set whether it's training or classes. Try to find a job that has the best balance between work your passionate about and your financial goals. Recognize the market is pretty cyclic and it appears even govt jobs like NYC is no longer a real safe haven from economic cycles due to politicians not believing in rainy day funds.

NYC has it's own financial regulations. The state has its own state financial regulatory authority.

NYC has it's own complex web of small business regulations, and inspectors that overlap with the state.

NYC has a complex restaurant dlsafryy rating system that literally doesn't mean anything.

In no other place in the county does a business operator need to handle 3 separate sets of regulations.

Moreover NYC regulations are almost always written to be far more complex and difficult to stay on top of that any other state's regulations. Because the city uses fines on small business owners as a tax base.

NYC has it's own massive and complex welfare system. Why can't we have one at the federal level and one at the state level only? Why do city taxpayers need to pay an additional giant pile of taxes to support systems that spend more on the bureaucracy than they do actually helping anyone.

The city has a fucking racial justice department.

And I can literally go on forever.

"Creating jobs" is literally something politicians brag about.