NEW YORK, NY May 07, 2003 — Despite new tax increases, and additional aid from Albany, Mayor Bloomberg says he'll still have to lay off 4500 city workers by the end of June. Their unions haven't given up the fight. They accuse the city of wasting cash on temporary workers and consultants - who are also feeling increasingly vulnerable in this fiscal climate. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more.

Sekina Mott began working for the city a year and a half ago. She was assigned to a data entry job at the Human Resources Administration. That's the agency in charge of welfare benefits. For Mott, it was her first job after years in which she too was on public assistance.

MOTT: I wasn't on welfare, you know what I'm saying, I paid my bills, I was independent, I didn't need these people. I just felt good about it.

Mott was paid 7 ninety five an hour. She was hired by an agency called Tempforce, which had a contract with the city to find jobs for people who had exhausted their public assistance benefits. Their assignments were supposed to last only a year. But Mott and her co-workers were extended repeatedly. Until last month.

MOTT: This is the letter that they sent us in the mail. It said. Dear Tempforce employees. The city budget problem make it necessary to end your career assignment with the city of NY on April 25th, 2003.

As a 28 year old single mother, Mott now worries about supporting her 2 young children.

There she goes little lady right her!

She also has rent to pay on her 1 bedroom apartment in a Williamsburg public housing complex. And unemployment takes weeks to activate.

MOTT: What are we supposed to do without a check 3-4 weeks. Who going to buy pampers? Who going to buy milk? Who going to take care of the kids you know what I'm saying? I don't know, I really don't know what I'm going to do I'm so stressed out, I don't know.

Sekina Mott was among 677 Tempforce employees who were not renewed. They demonstrated recently outside the city agencies where they used to work with a group called Community Voices Heard.

Paid jobs yes, Workfare no!

When the Bloomberg administration says it's planning to layoff 45-hundred employees, it's not including temporary workers. Temps aren't part of the city workforce. They're not in a union and they don't get benefits. In fact, there are technically no layoffs planned at all within the agency where Sekina Mott was just dismissed.

This so-called shadow workforce poses a problem for city labor leaders at a time of budget cuts. District Council 37 has been running television ads.

ADVERTISEMENT: City Hall's solution to the budget crisis is massive layoffs and service cuts. Sending us back to the 1970s. Meanwhile the city wastes billions on private contractors to do the same jobs as city workers .

The city has 600 different contracts with temporary agencies. And that doesn't even include the Education Department.

At a union rally last week, city workers complained that they often work side by side with temps and contractors. Petrona Graham works in the Bronx office of the Department of Environmental Protection.

GRAHAM: They have private contractors. And the union members can do the work that private contractors they're bringing in can do.

District Council 37 claims the city could save over a billion dollars annually by letting city workers do the jobs of temps and consultants. This includes high priced professionals like engineers and architects.

The budget for outside services grew dramatically during the administration of former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who believed in privatizing city services for less. City officials say there was a strong message from the top to reduce the headcount. And agencies often reacted to that pressure by contracting out whenever they could. But in a fiscal crisis, the Bloomberg administration has taken a different approach.

PAGE: It's not a question of philosophy it's a question of saving money.

Mark Page is the city's budget director. This year the city is expected to spend 74 million dollars on temporary services. But he says that number has been reduced to 56 million dollars in the coming fiscal year.

PAGE: We're doing our very best to maintain service and spend less under our fiscal circumstances and that includes trying to use the optimal mix of city workforce and in some cases to purchase the service by contract.

Union leaders acknowledge the city has made a recent effort to reduce its temp force. The administration for Children's Services for example hired some of its computer consultants to save money. But they say other agencies could do much more to solve the budget gap. Oliver Gray is associate director of District Council 37.

GRAY: The mayor is following a formula that's pat and true. I will get rid of permanent city workers and hope that will be enough to drive the problem away. He is not dealing with his expenditure side of the budget which includes these temps. And at some point he's going to have to do that if this crisis continues.

It's not just a question of cost. Local laws protect city employees from being displaced by temporary workers. Yet, while the city headcount has fallen during the past two years, the budget for temps has actually grown in some agencies. Union leaders are pursuing legal action now. City officials have denied any wrongdoing and say all contracts have been reviewed to ensure that temporary workers aren't replacing city employees.

As the budget battle drags on, union leaders are trying to protect their members by focusing on the private contractors. Meanwhile, many temps continue working at city agencies on a long term basis. This man - who didn't want to be identified - has been at the Human Resources Administration for 3 years.

TEMP: A lot of temps have been there so long a lot of people don't even realize we're temps.

He says he works as an administrative assistant - but makes far less than city workers who do similar jobs in other offices. He says the union has never offered to help him. Nor have any of the temps he works with gotten hired as permanent workers. Even though some did take the civil service test, he says.

TEMP: You get up every day, you go to work, you feel like OK you're part of society you have a job but they let you know you're a temp, never forgotten that you are a temp and literally you don't have same rights as other people.

In this weak economy, he says temps are feeling just as vulnerable as the city workers. Even if the city views them as a cheaper and more flexible alternative for now. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.