Privatization Effect

There seems to be no end in sight to the city privatization plans. The chicago skyway, parking garages, and other city assets have all gone private in recent years. City services--everything from custodial duties to security at city facilites--have slowly been outsourced, privatized, or phased out. During the privatization era the city has estimated to have shed thousands of jobs and saved millions of taxpayer dollars. The latest assets on the block are the parking meters and potentially the biggest asset ever privatized: midway airport.

This latest effort at privatization ought to make oemc employees sit up and take notice--all of the employees. It is no secret that the city sold off the equipment at oemc a long time ago in a lease back deal and Blogmaster cannot even be sure that the city retains rights to either the actual building itself or any of the technology contained within (Blogmasters sources indicate that its a combination of complex public/private partnerships between the city, motorola, sbc, and a few other entities). The only thing that the city retains a 100% vested interest in, according to said sources, is the personnel. And that can change at any time, if the midway deal flies.

That is because midway airport presently retains approximately 200 city jobs, several of which are aviation communications operators (acos). These acos are essentially dispatchers and calltakers, are currently part of the oemc, and are covered by ibew local 21 unit 2 in bargaining, must abide by the same contract, and are paid grade 13--the same as pcoIs. In short, they ARE us, albeit at a different location and doing the exact same work in different circumstances.

The city has publicly stated that under any such deal all midway city employees would receive "substantially similar" jobs at comparable pay while maintenance and emergency services (police and fire only) would remain the same. In other words, folks, the midway dispatch operations appear to be going private. Blogmasters sources advise that existing acos at midway will likely be transferred to ohare if they so choose or be forced to reapply for their jobs with a new entity if they stay and not necessarily be given any hiring preferences in an open pool of applicants.

If this little experiment at Midway proves successful and public safety does not appear to be compromised, can the pco privatization be far behind? After all, oemc pcos are some of the highest paying non supervisory, non management civilian positions to be found anywhere on the city payroll. And no college required (not yet anyway). And if the pcos are phased out--say to privatization at some later date--there would be no need for spcos, operations watch managers, the deputy director of police, and other support staff and on and on and on. The building itself could be turned completely over to the homeland security faction while 911 operations are moved offsite under private ownership. Using camera, satellite, and other highly developed technology it is not inconceivable that police dispatch could be conducted in the suburbs, downstate, or even abroad. It would be outsourcing at its best and daley appears to be the trailblazer in this regard. And so it goes.