Employees File Complaint With Union About Layoffs

Laid-off city employees have flooded their union with grievances over the way their layoffs were handled.

Union President Freddy Licon said some workers were denied vacation pay and sick pay they were owed under their contracts, and that others were not properly notified.

Interim City Manager Jack Simpson conceded that there is a problem, saying that union contracts require notifications of 30 to 90 days before a worker can be laid off. Because the city has no money, some workers had to be laid off sooner than their contracts allowed, he said.

“We have promised to make up the money we owe the workers when we can,” Simpson said.

The financially pressed city, which had balanced its budget with money from a bingo parlor owner’s private foundation, will lay off more than two-thirds of city employees by December.

For more than a year, the city of 14,000 has relied on payments of $200,000 a month from a foundation controlled by developer Irving Moskowitz, owner of the city’s bingo club, to meet its payroll. Those payments stopped in July.