Public Employee Press

Labor defeats Wisconsin-type attack in Nassau County

A union fight-back campaign forced Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano to back down from his push for emergency powers to override negotiated union contracts.

A contingent of DC 37 members rallied Oct. 17 with 5,000 Nassau workers at county headquarters in Mineola to protest Mangano's effort to cut wages and benefits unilaterally. Three days later, Mangano announced that he would end efforts for his Fiscal Crisis Reform Act.

The act came from the playbook that right-wing Republican governors, such as Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio used in efforts to kill public employees' bargaining rights (see page 8). With the county facing a $300 million budget gap, the act would have given Mangano near-dictatorial power to force workers to pay 25 percent of their health- care costs, ignore union contracts and eliminate county departments and offices.

Nassau County's workforce includes 6,000 members of DC 37's sister union, the Civil Service Employees Association, which organized the rally with unions of county police, detectives and sheriffs.

"There is no excuse for management to walk away from fairly negotiated contracts," CSEA Local 1000 President Danny Donohue said at the rally.

Earlier this year, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, a state watchdog panel, assumed control of Nassau's finances. The panel imposed a wage freeze on the 9,000 county employees that will last until 2015. Unions are fighting the freeze in court.

"We have to remain united because what happens in Nassau County can happen anywhere," said Jim Cullen, the New York area field services director of DC 37's parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.