In May of this year my wife resigned from NYCERS about two years shy of the date she would have been able to retire. She started working at NYCERS in the fall of 1998. In December of 2003, she was promoted to Deputy Director of Administration by Milt Aron, the Deputy Executive Director.
Prior to that, starting in 1980, she worked at the Mayor’s Office, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Department of Homeless Services.
In June, 2005 she was demoted by Aron with the explicit approval of Martha Stark, Chair of the NYCERS Board of Trustees and the Finance Commissioner. She was demoted because of her relationship with me. She was forced back to her permanent civil service position and her salary was reduced by $14,000, the amount that she had been given when she was promoted.
From June of 2005 to May of 2015 my wife was given no work. She was told many times that there were strict orders from the executive staff that she was not to be given any work. Many times over the ten years she explicitly asked for work.
On a few rare occasions she was given some significant work but the minute the executive staff became aware of it, the work was stopped. Kin Mak could always be counted on to pass the word along to Karen Mazza about the work assignment.
In 2013 my wife was hospitalized for 12 days with acute ulcerative colitis.
In 2014, while driving to church on Palm Sunday, she had a major heart attack. She almost died on the side of the road. It was incredibly fortunate that she was at a stop sign and that her 16 year old daughter was with her in the car. The EMT’s were there in minutes and were able revive her with a defibrillator. She spent 18 days in the hospital. She was on reduced body temperature protocol for possible brain damage. She had double bypass surgery and another procedure for a defibrillator implant.
Both of these illnesses were directly caused by stress.
After both of these hospital events she returned to work. Both times she asked for work and both times NYCERS executive staff refused to assign her any work.
In the spring of 2015 the stress of being totally marginalized at NYCERS finally became too much of a threat to her health. She reluctantly resigned. At that point her salary was $104,000.
For many years now, I have been writing about the wretched way that NYCERS, and I mean D'Allesandro, Mazza, and Baksh/Ramsami, have treated members, retirees and NYCERS employees. I speak from personal experience.
You can understand why people lie, cheat, and steal for their own personal gain but to be just plain nasty for no good reason is despicable. The only thing I can come up with is that they are so incompetent they think they have to kick every one under them to hide their own failures. Maybe City Hall and the new NYCERS Chair will get tired of them like the previous mayor did with Martha Stark.
2 comments:
I am so sorry for the troubles you sustained after working for so long at nycers I am more knowledgeable reading this blog and finding out how badly this agency is being ran into the ground ...I have seen to much change working for the city and none of it for the better . I will be glad I finally retire but will i get everything I am entitled or will it be simply eaten by taxes,inflation, and a read adjusted because of some future crisis ? Please keep sounding the alarm bells as their are those who need to be informed and awakened !
I was treated equally shabby by John J Murphy, Milton Aaron and Karen Mazza. I was accused of treating my staff poorly but because both of those staff had a personal relationship with Mr Murphy, I was never given an opportunity to defend myself and treated like a criminal despite excellent performance reviews and a performance record of excellence. As well, I was accused of not being able to keep staff. However, after I resigned from NYCERS my last two staff members resigned including one of the staff that I was accused of treating poorly.
It is unfortunate what happened to Niki who previously had worked for me at two other City agencies with no problem and willingly came to NYCERS. However, in the end she stabbed me in the back complaining about me to the then Deputy Executive Director, Leo Vallee. It was assumed that everything she said about me was true without anyone ever consulting me.
I too suffered great harm to my health after resigning from NYCERS after I was removed from my position with no explanation and it was clear that John J Murhpy was going to try and demote me to my permanent title. I had a nervous breakdown and then had breast cancer and more recently a very rare aggressive uterine cancer. Poor treatment goes both ways. Mr. Murphy always praised me for my significant contributions to NYCERS and then treated me like some kind of criminal. I loved working at NYCERS and thought that I would stay there until retirement age.
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