By Alex Ginsberg
The rancorous labor dispute between a Queens mental health provider and a major health-professionals union intensified earlier this month when the National Labor Relations Board agreed to hear charges that the organization intimidated and harassed workers who were active in a unionization drive.
At the hearing, to be held Sept. 16 in Brooklyn, the Civil Service Employees Association Local 1000 will make its case that the organization, Astoria-based Quality Services for Autism Community, confiscated union materials, interrogated workers about the union drive, engaged in surveillance of workers and issued warnings and a suspension to employees in retaliation for union activity, according to a complaint filed with the NLRB.
“This employer is very aggressive at interfering in the process,” said CSEA organizer Paul Frank.
CSEA represents about 250,000 mental health workers statewide.
But Gary Maffei, the QSAC executive director at whom most of the allegations were specifically aimed, denied disciplining anyone for reasons other than “normal business reasons.” He said he was the victim of a smear campaign by the union aimed at cowing him into approving the organization of the workers.
“The CSEA wants union dues,” he said, adding that union leaders saw in his workers “$150,000 a year.”
QSAC employs about 600 workers, roughly 300 of whom could be unionized if the drive succeeds. There are 14 QSAC sites in Queens.
According to the union, direct care workers at QSAC earn between $8 to $12 per hour.
The most serious allegation in the complaint focuses on Chris Ayala, a QSAC worker who was suspended for six days in March.
According to Ayala, QSAC disciplined him for placing union-related fliers in the mailboxes of other employees. Ayala said he was one of three employees management suspected, but QSAC singled him out because on that very day he had made his first open statements to other workers in favor of the union.
Maffei insisted that the employee named in CSEA’s complaint — he would not confirm that it was Ayala — was suspended for professional negligence.
Ayala also claimed that he was punished for publicly complaining in February that vehicles and kitchen areas at QSAC’s Hollis site were unsanitary.
“Two days later it was made my responsibility to clean out the kitchen and the vehicles,” said Ayala, 28.
The Richmond Hill resident and father of three, who makes $27,000 a year as an administrative assistant at the Hollis site, said management was vehemently opposed to workers’ forming a union.
It is an accusation Maffei flatly denied.
“My response is that if my employees want a union, they should have a union,” Maffei said. That’s what I’ve said repeatedly.”
But he contended CSEA was not interested in what the workers wanted. Maffei said the unionization drive was part of an increasingly common labor strategy to rope more workers into what is essentially a money-making operation for the unions.
“They go in and try to force the employer to acquiesce by embarrassing them, having politicians call up, religious leaders call up, to sully the reputation of the business,” Maffei said.
To some extent, that has been happening. In a letter to Maffei, City Councilman Hiram Monserrate (D-Corona) wrote, “In light of the testimony that I have received and your steadfast decision to ignore the workers’ chosen union representation, I have no choice as an elected official and public advocate but to stand publicly with and uphold the rights of these workers to freely associate and organize a union.”
Maffei was troubled that the campaign by CSEA had succeeded in recruiting some public officials.
“It bothers me because the elected officials are saying they’re for the workers,” he said. “Well if they’re for the workers and workers don’t want the union, what’s their position? Are they with the workers or the CSEA?”
Reach reporter Alex Ginsberg by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
