NEW YORK—New York City is scheduled to renew its contract with a private firm for the development of a payroll management system that has been fraught with problems from the start and is nearing a $1 billion dollar price tag.
Around 80 unionized city workers gathered on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday to protest renewal of this contract, which is slated for Sept. 30. They say this software is taking money out of their pockets while perpetuating a time-keeping payroll system that city employee Micheal Greene described as “the ominous shadow of an Orwellian time clock.”
The City of New York contracted out the development and implementation of a system called CityTime to a consulting company SIAC, one of the largest military contractors in the United States. It replaces a system called Auto Time that was developed in the 1990s by city employees.
The new system is projected to save $60 million annually, said Joel Bondy of city’s Office of Payroll and Administration in a conversation with Councilman Joseph Addabbo, according to Local 375, the Civil Service Technical Guild.
The costs of the system were outlined to Council Member Letitia James of Brooklyn in a letter from the City Independent Budget Office. They include $641 million in actual and planned spending from 2000 through 2011, $3.3 million in capital commitments prior to 2000, and an operating budget of $232 million including planned spending through 2014.
That comes to a total of $876.3 million spent. Based on the estimated $60 million the system was projected to save the city annually, it would take 14.6 years to break even, and this is not taking into account maintenance, upgrading, and operating costs after 2014.
Council Member James has been a strong opponent of CityTime, claiming that the city is “privatizing municipal workers at a time when we are in a recession.”
“We are the ones that do the dirty work that nobody wants [to do]. People come here, take the money out of the city, and [then] they leave. We live in the city, we spend our money in the city, so why shouldn’t we reap the benefits of our harvests?” said Carmen Charles, president of Local 420, the Municipal Hospital Employees Union.
“Privatization does not serve the union very well, it does not serve the community very well,” she added.
The advantages of the CityTime system over the older city-owned software are a point of contention.
Under the old system, clerical timekeepers were paid to track employees’ hours, but this job has now been placed on each worker themselves, according to Jessica Dewberry of Local 375.
Now, employees must sign in and out and submit time sheets at the end of each week, which leads to a lengthy process of sorting out discrepancies and adjusting pay when errors occur.
“If you clock in one minute after your scheduled work day, or if you leave one minute before your scheduled workday, that becomes an error in CityTime. In order to correct that error, you’re going to have to go through all kinds of hoops and talk to all kinds of people at your place of work,” Dewberry said.
“One thing that doesn’t happen is if you work 30 minutes past your scheduled workday or an hour past your scheduled workday, which I often do, there’s no message that pops up and says, ‘Thank you,’” she added.
Employees that have to work past their scheduled time are now doing so off the clock.
Around 80 unionized city workers gathered on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday to protest renewal of this contract, which is slated for Sept. 30. They say this software is taking money out of their pockets while perpetuating a time-keeping payroll system that city employee Micheal Greene described as “the ominous shadow of an Orwellian time clock.”
The City of New York contracted out the development and implementation of a system called CityTime to a consulting company SIAC, one of the largest military contractors in the United States. It replaces a system called Auto Time that was developed in the 1990s by city employees.
The new system is projected to save $60 million annually, said Joel Bondy of city’s Office of Payroll and Administration in a conversation with Councilman Joseph Addabbo, according to Local 375, the Civil Service Technical Guild.
The costs of the system were outlined to Council Member Letitia James of Brooklyn in a letter from the City Independent Budget Office. They include $641 million in actual and planned spending from 2000 through 2011, $3.3 million in capital commitments prior to 2000, and an operating budget of $232 million including planned spending through 2014.
That comes to a total of $876.3 million spent. Based on the estimated $60 million the system was projected to save the city annually, it would take 14.6 years to break even, and this is not taking into account maintenance, upgrading, and operating costs after 2014.
Council Member James has been a strong opponent of CityTime, claiming that the city is “privatizing municipal workers at a time when we are in a recession.”
“We are the ones that do the dirty work that nobody wants [to do]. People come here, take the money out of the city, and [then] they leave. We live in the city, we spend our money in the city, so why shouldn’t we reap the benefits of our harvests?” said Carmen Charles, president of Local 420, the Municipal Hospital Employees Union.
“Privatization does not serve the union very well, it does not serve the community very well,” she added.
The advantages of the CityTime system over the older city-owned software are a point of contention.
Under the old system, clerical timekeepers were paid to track employees’ hours, but this job has now been placed on each worker themselves, according to Jessica Dewberry of Local 375.
Now, employees must sign in and out and submit time sheets at the end of each week, which leads to a lengthy process of sorting out discrepancies and adjusting pay when errors occur.
“If you clock in one minute after your scheduled work day, or if you leave one minute before your scheduled workday, that becomes an error in CityTime. In order to correct that error, you’re going to have to go through all kinds of hoops and talk to all kinds of people at your place of work,” Dewberry said.
“One thing that doesn’t happen is if you work 30 minutes past your scheduled workday or an hour past your scheduled workday, which I often do, there’s no message that pops up and says, ‘Thank you,’” she added.
Employees that have to work past their scheduled time are now doing so off the clock.
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