By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

MAYOR BLOOMBERG is creating a legacy no mayor could be proud of: declining public education, shrinking public health care, corrupt and wasteful contracting out, high unemployment and low pay.

His latest move is an assault on the wages of the city's blue-collar workers, the men and women who use their smarts, their skills and their strength to do the hardest and dirtiest jobs.

Laborers, Sewage Treatment Workers, Highway Repairers, Locksmiths, Plumbers, Electricians and more - they built this great city and they are absolutely essential to keep it running. When a water main breaks, you don't call an overpaid mayoral assistant in a $1,000 suit. If not for the STWs, we would all be drowning in filth. Keeping jail locks working is vital for public safety.

For more than a century, these "prevailing-rate" workers have had the right to appeal if their wages fall behind similar employees in the private sector.

Under Section 220 of the state Labor Law - which I defended strongly when I was state Labor Commissioner - if the city offers inadequate pay, these employees can ask the Comptroller to compare them with non-city employees doing similar work and make an objective determination of a fair wage. If the mayor thinks the result is unreasonable, he can go to court.

In fact, this just happened: The Comptroller called for substantial, fair and justified wage increases for our Laborers in Local 924, who had gone 11 years without a pay increase - 11 years of hardship, borrowing, second jobs, lost homes and broken marriages. The mayor appealed; the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court upheld the Comptroller's determination.

This was only one of several cases where the courts - and even the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, where the chief judge is appointed by the mayor - rejected his position on blue collar pay. Bloomberg was losing, so two weeks after the Laborers won, he changed the rules. With neither negotiations nor notice, he reclassified the jobs into civil service categories that don't have the right to appeal to the Comptroller.

Some analysts in the media see Bloomberg's action as a vindictive slap at the workers who beat him in court or an attempt to weaken Comptroller John Liu. It is also far worse. This is a naked power grab aimed at suppressing the pay of the hardworking men and women who handle some of the city's toughest jobs.

And by going after both their wallets and their century-old bargaining rights, Bloomberg has allied himself with the right-wing politicians nationwide who have tried to destroy collective bargaining for public service workers, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (who now faces a recall vote) and Ohio's John Kasich (whose anti-labor law was repealed in November by an overwhelming "voters veto").

I was proud to speak out on the City Hall steps April 19, surrounded by a united labor movement - and city workers, and state, public sector and private - fighting back together. We all know that if this mayor succeeds in killing the blue-collar workers' Section 220 rights, the rest of us will be the next targets in his war on the working class of New York City.

Thanks for great Tier 4 effort
I want to personally thank everyone at DC 37 - local leaders, staff and stewards - whose dedicated hard work on the days, evenings and weekends before the March 31 deadline helped 20,000 members join the Tier 4 pension plan instead of paying more and working longer for the reduced pensions of Tier 6 (see 20,000 join Tier 4 plan).