“What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now!” chanted the workers, banging on scaffolding and clapping along. “People united will never be defeated! People united will never be defeated!”

The rally, staged by Service Employees International Union’s 32BJ chapter, was held to help 1 Lincoln Square’s 18 building workers unionize. According to the workers, their requests to join 32BJ have been shot down by the building’s condo board, which they claim is providing them with benefits and advancement opportunities inferior to what they would get from the union.
“I’m getting older,” said one worker, Terrence McGovern, head concierge who has worked in the building for 16 years. “I’ve got my own family. My kids are growing up. I need to provide.”
According to Joe Eisman, residential organizing coordinator at 32BJ, an employee who has worked in 1 Lincoln Square for as long as McGovern could afford to retire for less than a year with the building’s current benefits package. The building also provides no access to citywide training programs for trades like plumbing and carpentry—courses that cost up to $20,000 if paid for out of pocket—which allow workers to move forward in their careers.

To become part of a union, workers must demonstrate to their employer that a majority wants to join, then the employer must recognize the union and negotiate a contract. Employees at 1 Lincoln Square said that their problem is recognition: The building’s condo board refuses to listen to their requests.

“When I was on the board, it was important for us to make sure that the guys were on par with the union or better than the union,” said Joyce Silver, a longtime resident of the building who served as the board’s president 10 years ago. “That was our mandate—to make sure that the guys were happy.” Silver came out to the protest to tell the workers that she supported them. According to her, their paltry benefits were the result of the current board’s neglect.

Heather Albert, another resident at the rally (and the wife of famous sportscaster Marv Albert), agreed. “They’re cheap,” she said of the board, and called its members “a five-member dictatorship.”

“We’re really never given any information about what’s going on this building,” she added. “They’re saying this is the way we’re doing it and that’s it.”

She assured the workers that the residents were on their side. “You guys have always been here for us,” she said, “and we want to be here for you.”

McGovern and a fellow worker, doorman Nelson Arias, affirmed the workers’ good relationship with the building’s residents, and agreed that their problems seemed to come from the current board.
“If we ever had a problem back then, we always went to the board and they helped us out,”

McGovern said. “But now they’ve become more management focused and now it has totally turned. Before, they’d sit down and talk to you, and it’d be an amicable solution. Now it’s turned into either take it or leave it.”

He noted that the board worried that unionizing would create a wedge between workers and residents, but ironically it was the board itself that kept them apart. “We’re professionals. I’ve been doing this for 16 years. If I become union, it’s not going to stop me from doing my job,” he said. “I know my responsibilities and my duties, and I’ll still go above and beyond the call of duty to help all the residents out.”

The board, via a Cooper Square Realty spokesperson, could not be reached, and did not respond to requests for comments on the rally. Silver and Albert are both running for positions on the board in the next election, which will be held in January.

“This is a West Side moment,” said City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who showed up to support the workers and 32BJ. “People walk down their street and they see big tall buildings and they don’t understand that there are people in them that care deeply about the neighborhood, workers’ rights, not just about themselves.”

For residents to show up to the rally and voice their support, she said, was “very special, very wonderful.”

The city’s eviction moratorium was extended post-Sandy, but tenants are left hoping they’ll have enough time

Last Thursday, Council Member Dan Garodnick, various legal groups and at least one New Yorker facing eviction convened on the steps of City Hall to push for an extension to the eviction moratorium that had been lifted the Monday before.

The New York Civil Court had initially issued a moratorium on evictions following Hurricane Sandy, but legal advocacy groups were calling for an extension, indicating that thousands of New Yorkers were still without a home after the storm.

“To resume evictions when we know many families will have nowhere to go is callous and irresponsible,” Garodnick said in a statement.

In spite of the rally’s minimal turnout among those directly impacted, the New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) has since announced it will extend the moratorium, giving tenants facing eviction until the beginning of February to catch up on past-due rent before initiating eviction procedures.

While the extension may alleviate pressure for some, one such tenant, Maria Perez, who believes she was the only person in her position at Thursday’s rally, just hopes that will be enough time for her.

“I’m meeting with a lawyer … I have my fingers crossed,” Perez said.

Perez is one New Yorker and Lower East Side resident strongly affected by the moratorium, particularly as her situation has been exacerbated following Hurricane Sandy.

She said while there are many like her, there was little to no information disseminated about the City Hall rally beforehand, making it difficult for other displaced New Yorkers to trek out and show their support and meet with the legal groups present, like MFY Legal Services.

“I know I’m not the only one going through this,” Perez said.

Nonetheless, the rally was successful for Perez, who was approached by a lawyer willing to look into her situation.

Perez has been on the brink of eviction since her daughter moved out two years ago and NYCHA’s Section 8 branch never lowered her rent. The organization has also been completely uncommunicative, she said. She said her building suffered severe damage in the storm, damage that has become yet another obstacle.

“Section 8 has been asking for things like my Con Edison breakdown,” an exasperated Perez said.

“My landlord doesn’t care if I stay,” she said. “Section 8 is the problem.”

She doesn’t blame the program entirely for their oversights, however, pointing out they are clearly overburdened. Perez said while they used to assign one worker to a set number of tenants, their offices are now an endless array of windows and chairs for waiting, and “you never see the same person twice.”

“[Hurricane Sandy] slowed down the process,” she said, as she has been trying to fight the pending eviction.

Perez said she has been unable to get in contact with the necessary people at Section 8 to resolve her situation—one she claims is an illegitimate eviction. If this was difficult prior to the storm, it’s all but impossible now.

Wasim Lone of the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) tenants organization has been helping Perez with her case.

“She has serious medical problems,” explained Lone, who was rushing off to help Perez with her situation at the time, particularly ensuring she receives her Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
“I’m sending her information to the Marshall,” he said.

“GOLES is a rat hole with five or six people working,” explained Perez. “But they are some of the few people who care.”

GOLES, which aims to give power to low-income tenants on the Lower East Side and keep them in their homes, is funded by corporations, like some banks, and various government agencies.

The process Perez describes has reportedly been laborious from the start, but the extension gives her more time to resolve the situation.

“I’m going to a Section 8 office now,” she said, after speaking with Our Town Downtown. “I hope it’s not like the zoo up on Fordham Road.”

May has seen a renewed vigor for certain activist movements, namely “Occupy Student Debt” and, on May 1, “May Day.” For it’s part, the Occupy Student Debt movement renewed its protest efforts as collective student debts broke the $1 Trillion threshold, with rallies planned for May 2 “at Union Square in Manhattan, and several colleges and universities around the country,” according to New York Times. However, thus far, the protesters that comprise Occupy Student Debt have been unsuccessful in achieving their goals, which include government regulation of private interest rates from existing loans offered from private lenders.

Similarly, May Day 2012 was an attempt by the self-proclaimed 99% (including many OWS Protestors) to “remove themselves” economically. Protesters were encouraged to skip out on work, shopping and spending in a globally coordinated attempt to “…collectively change working conditions in our world…” by “stepping out of the systems of production that confine and divide us,” according to MayDayNYC.org.

Both events circle back to the lingering disconnect that many New Yorkers – including students, immigrants and parents – have felt since the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement (which began in Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, 2011). Since then, those sympathetic with the movement have referred to themselves as “the 99%,” a perceived mark of disconnect from financial institutions, corporations, as well as other wealthy establishments and individuals.