Tens of thousands of New York City employees who did not report for work during the snowstorm on Thursday could lose a day of leave — even though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sent out a predawn message that day saying that all city nonemergency offices and schools would be closed.
A memo went out to the heads of all city agencies on Monday saying that office employees will lose a day of vacation or comp time unless they write an acceptable excuse note.
“I thought I had a snow day,” said a school psychologist in Manhattan whose job is to advise parents about special education services. She asked that her name be withheld because she was not authorized to speak to the news media. “I had no concept that it was a possibility that I was an emergency worker.”
Among those who could be docked time for not trudging through the foot and a half of snow to get to work were clerical workers, social workers and secretaries — in short, nearly anyone who normally reports to a city office.
The result was a broad sense of disbelief among city workers, some of whom said that they would have made an effort to come in, had they known they were supposed to.
“I am afraid one more time the city is trying to nickel-and-dime its employees in a misguided attempt to save a few dollars,” said Josiane Georges, the data manager of the Nurse-Family Partnership program at the Department of Health. As for the excuse notes, she wondered if anyone would ever read them. “Many of us just don’t trust that this will happen at all,” she said.
City Hall had little to say on Tuesday about the disconnect between the mayor’s initial announcement, a news release that was issued at 5:39 a.m. Thursday, and the decision to dock employees a leave day if they did not come to work. Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said that the mayor had said on news programs later that day that anyone who could come in should do so as the roads cleared. Some departments began notifying workers later Thursday that they should report to work.
“In most cases, city workers who didn’t come in because of the snow will be asked to provide a simple statement to their timekeeper and, assuming it is found satisfactory, receive an excused day,” Mr. Post said.
In Mr. Bloomberg’s initial announcement, however, he said that all city nonemergency offices would be closed that day.
“New York City almost never takes a snow day, but today is one of those rare days,” Mr. Bloomberg said, warning of extensive subway delays, the suspension of bus service and dangerous driving conditions. “People should stay at home and off the roads.”
Official notices of the city’s decision about penalizing those nonemergency workers who did not report for work went out to most employees on Tuesday. Those notices were generated after the agency that manages the city’s 200,000-plus workers issued a memo on the matter on Monday.
“As you know,” the commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, Edna Wells Handy, wrote in a memo to all city agency heads, “city employees were requested to make every effort to overcome transportation difficulties caused by the January 26-27, 2011 snowstorm and report to work.” The memo made no mention of the mayor’s earlier statement about the closing of nonemergency offices.
“It speaks to the mayor’s fickle nature,” said Arthur Cheliotes, the president of the Communication Workers of America Local 1180, a union for midlevel supervisory employees. “He thinks he knows what he wants, but he doesn’t know what he wants. We will file the necessary grievances to protest this arbitrary behavior, but it is no way to run a city.”
Michael Mendel, the secretary of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers’ union, said that on a typical school snow day, employees who work in offices were supposed to come to work. But on Jan. 27, in some cases, it was simply impossible. The offices where school employees were supposed to report were closed. In other offices, supervisors told employees to stay home, the union said.
“How do you go to a closed office?” Mr. Mendel said. “It’s insane.”
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