On May 6, the District of Columbia laid off 115 employees of
the Child and Family Services Agency, which is responsible for the protection
of abused and neglected children. The firings came as a shock to the first
group of workers to be fired, who were summoned to a mandatory morning meeting
and told that their positions were being eliminated due to an agency
“realignment.”
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PSL photo: Kim Foster
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Workers were ordered to surrender their employee badges and cell
phones, given a “separation packet” of information, and escorted out of the
building by agency security, with DC Metro Police looking on. Similar meetings
were held throughout the day as the CFSA administration laid off group after
group of social workers, clerical workers and other support staff who are
essential to the agency.
Most of the workers fired provide direct services and care
to abused children and their families. Over half of the workers losing their
jobs today were social service assistants. The SSAs are called the “backbone”
of the agency and assist the licensed social workers by doing the day-to-day
tasks that are essential to providing care to foster children such as
transporting them to visit family and to and from medical or therapeutic
appointments. A whole division of workers responsible for the oversight of
“congregate care” facilities such as group homes was also eliminated.
CFSA was already understaffed; the loss of so many front-line
workers will be devastating. The vast majority of SSAs are African-American
women. CFSA administrators are planning eventually to replace the SSAs by
creating a new position within the agency that is essentially the same as an
SSA, but with a different title and higher qualifications. The new position
will require workers have at least a bachelor’s degree, which will prevent
almost all of the current SSAs from applying.
A lunchtime “Rally for Respect” was called by AFSCME Local
2401, the union that represents the agency workers. A large group of the
workers, both fired and still employed, gathered at the front doors of the
agency to demand that agency leadership and city politicians restore their
jobs. Fired workers spoke to the crowd about how they worried about providing
for their children and grandchildren. Coworkers still on the job spoke about
how the loss of the SSAs will result in enormous amounts of work for the rest
of the agency, leading to poor care for abused and neglected children under CFSA’s
care. “Who’s going to do the work?” asked many employees.
Union officials also spoke at the rally, telling the workers
that the Reduction In Force violated several important sections of the union
contract with the District. Although the agency claims to be conducting a
“realignment” due to a budget shortage, in truth the actions against the
workers is a continuation of an intentional, organized attack against the
working class of the District.
Mayor Adrian Fenty is continuing a long pattern of gentrification
of the city, and has a policy of “realignment” and privatization of the
District’s vital services. Last year, Fenty ordered the closing of 13 city-run
child-care centers, all of them in poor areas. Those child-care jobs were then
contracted out to private, non-union agencies, whose employees make much less
than District employees and receive few or no benefits. The child-care workers
were almost all Black women.
The mayor also continues his union-busting attacks on
schools and welfare agencies, eliminating the jobs of dedicated workers who
have not graduated from college. “A lot of these workers are single mothers,
and almost all of them are Black,” said Sabrina Brown, president of AFSCME
Local 2401. “This is racism, sexism, and union busting all in one!”
The workers of CFSA and the rest of the DC agencies under
attack will not be defeated and are determined to keep fighting for their jobs,
their hard-won benefits, and respect from the DC politicians who represent the
ruling class.
