Hiring without politics? No way
Organizations, unions still hold sway for
city jobs
By Gary Washburn and Laurie Cohen
Tribune staff reporters
Published October 3, 2004
A former Chicago department head, chatting recently in a City
Hall corridor, became visibly uneasy when the conversation
turned to hiring and political connections.
Who makes the call to instruct a department head to put somebody
"special" on the payroll?
Backing away, the ex-official at first declined to answer.
Finally, he held up four fingers.
"The fourth floor," he whispered.
City Hall's Room 406, one floor beneath the offices of Mayor
Richard Daley, is the home of the mayor's office of
Intergovernmental Affairs. IGA, as it is known, is responsible
for working with city aldermen and other governmental agencies
to advance Daley's legislative agenda.
But a longtime court ban on patronage notwithstanding, insiders
say IGA is also where politicians and union officials go to
arrange the hiring of favored individuals.
Daley said Saturday that when the IGA receives job requests for
individuals, it forwards the recommendations to the appropriate
officials. "They would not hire them, no," he said. "They would
send them to personnel."
Daley's IGA operation seeks to avoid the spotlight, but the
hiring of four allegedly unqualified men with connections to
Carpenters Union Local 15 as $50,000-a-year building inspectors
has put a new focus on how some people wind up on the city's
payroll at a time when thousands of Chicagoans without clout are
scrounging for work.
The current flap over city hiring practices comes as Daley is
battling in court to overturn a 21-year-old decree prohibiting
political hiring of employees. The mayor contends the ban is
costly to implement and no longer needed because city hiring is
so fair.
The news about unqualified building inspectors undermines the
city's arguments to do away with the decree, said Michael
Shakman, the attorney whose federal lawsuit led to that ban on
City Hall patronage.
"Claims that the city hiring system is professionally operated
and free of outside influence--political or union--are false,"
he said. "The mayor pretends that the city has a professional,
high-quality hiring process and then you see a situation like
the hiring of these individuals, which makes it clear that it
doesn't."
Daley on Saturday maintained his stance that Shakman should be
overturned. "Only 1,000 of the city's 38,000 employees are
Shakman exempt," he said. "There are 1,000 employees the mayor
can appoint."
John Doerrer, Daley's current head of IGA, declined comment
about his office's role in hiring through mayoral press
secretary Jacquelyn Heard. Heard also passed along no comments
from IGA officials Robert Sorich and Tim McCarthy, who City Hall
sources say also have been involved in hiring.
They refused, "not because of the nature of this story," Heard
said. "They don't do interviews."
Considering people for employment who come recommended "happens
every day in industry," Heard said. "Someone becomes aware of a
vacancy in a particular field, and they may know of someone who
may have the perfect qualifications to fill that position. They
may go to a supervisor or department head and drop off a resume.
What happens in IGA is no different."
Doerrer formerly was Daley's top liaison to organized labor,
historically a political power bloc squarely in the camp of the
Regular Democratic Organization. He was promoted to head IGA
four years ago, succeeding Victor Reyes, now a lawyer in private
practice who is a top leader of the Hispanic Democratic
Organization, a pro-Daley group that enjoys growing influence at
City Hall.
Half a dozen Chicago politicians agreed to talk about the city's
hiring process, but only with the understanding that their names
not be used for fear of political retribution.
"Say they are going to have some truck drivers for O'Hare
Field," said one. "A guy has an application in ... and he is
qualified. You can kind of push him up."
"Generally you have a list of people you are trying to help, and
you give it to somebody in the mayor's office or
Intergovernmental Affairs," said another elected official. "And
if you are on board [with the mayor's] program, they try and
work with you. ... There's no letters. We don't do letters."
But even longtime Democratic stalwarts say that their hiring
pipeline has narrowed substantially in the last few years. One
reason is Daley administration cutbacks forced by tough economic
times. But some complain that another is the preference shown to
union bosses and to independent political organizations loyal to
the mayor.
The four newly hired building inspectors from Local 15 resigned
or were fired last month after officials found bogus claims in
their resumes or could not confirm their qualifications. Two of
the men were sons of top union officials. And one of them,
Andrew Ryan, claimed to have gone through a carpenters
apprenticeship program, earned a journeyman's card and had two
years of professional experience despite being only 19.
City Personnel Commissioner Glenn Carr has declined comment on
the inspectors' case. Buildings Commissioner Stan Kaderbek, who
has taken Daley's blame for the hirings, has insisted that no
political pressure was exerted to put the unqualified men into
their safety-sensitive positions.
But Daley himself acknowledged last week that "trade unions have
an influence. Everybody knows that ... This is nothing new. ...
There's nothing wrong with that."
Daley returned to the topic Saturday, saying: "They always have
influence. There's nothing wrong with that. They can send
qualified people. These two were not qualified, and that's the
saddest comment. They just made a bad decision."
Some Democratic officials believe that they have less clout than
labor leaders.
One said that when he talks to officials in IGA, "They say, `We
are going to try to help you, but we have 50 aldermen. ... and
we have the unions we have to take care of.'
"It's no coincidence that these building inspectors came
directly from the unions," he said. "They negotiate [contracts]
with the unions. They want to keep a decent relationship with
them."
Organized labor has long enjoyed clout at City Hall. In 1980, a
Tribune investigation found that about 50 unions at the time
controlled several thousand jobs. David Sark, then the
80-year-old retired secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 726,
said that his local controlled a quota of positions throughout
his career, dating to 1932.
Unions aside, insiders say that freelance political
organizations loyal to Daley, such as the Hispanic Democratic
Organization, routinely get jobs and promotions for their
members.
A 2002 investigation by the Tribune found that about 500 HDO
members were on the city payroll, most employed in departments
where the organization's lieutenants hold high-ranking posts.
Some city truck drivers toil for years as seasonal workers, or
part-timers, before making it to the permanent roster, but Norma
Gasca spent less than seven months as a seasonal in the
Department of Streets and Sanitation before becoming a full-time
driver in 2001, records show. Before joining the city, Gasca
worked as an aide to state Rep. Edward Acevedo (D-Chicago), a
key member of HDO.
Of the 112 drivers who have been promoted from seasonal to
full-time status this year, city records show that 20 have ties
to HDO, a group whose leaders included Reyes and current Streets
and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez.
Truck drivers are selected for full-time status based on factors
ranging from attendance to their driving records, said Matt
Smith, a Streets and Sanitation spokesman. "Political
affiliation would have no bearing on our hiring," he added.
Under the 1983 Shakman decree, named for Shakman, hiring
decisions can't be related to political considerations. The
decree, and another from 1972 involving firings and promotions,
covers all but 1,002 of the city's 38,400 jobs.
In addition to banning politically related hires, the 1983
decree also required the city to create a hiring plan
establishing detailed procedures for advertising job openings,
screening candidates and making hiring decisions. The plan
states that the city will screen job candidates "to ensure that
the candidate selected is qualified."
Though the Personnel Department is supposed to oversee the
city's efforts to comply with Shakman, Carr said in a 2001
deposition that he had never read the decree.
Asked if he was familiar with it when he became commissioner in
1989, Carr responded: "No." Asked if he later made an effort to
become familiar with it, he again responded: "No."
Shown the city's principles to comply with the decree, Carr
said: "Like I said, I have never seen this before." And asked
about the city's hiring plan required under the decree, he
replied: "I have no opinion on the detailed hiring provisions.
As I indicated earlier, I am not familiar with them."
In recent negotiations with Shakman and his lawyers, city
officials have pushed unsuccessfully to have union collective
bargaining agreements take precedence over the decree-mandated
hiring procedures, Shakman said in an interview. According to
the city, 80 percent of its workforce is covered by such
agreements.
Meanwhile, one alderman reckons that young Andrew Ryan
ultimately may attain those "perfect qualifications" that
mayoral press secretary Heard talks about.
"This kid is 19," he said. "In two years he'll be 21, and he
will have [earned] all the credentials. He will be back at the
door."
Copyright © 2004,
Chicago Tribune
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