PEP June 2003: Editorial, Lillian Roberts: Battling Mike's double standard for workers.

All we hear from the mayor lately is a repetitive, one-note song. It goes like this: “The unions must give back $600 million in labor costs. If I don’t get what I want, I will pull out of negotiations and punish you with layoffs, whether they make economic sense or not.”

This monotonous tune with its misguided message has been replayed regularly by our daily newspapers. “Everybody has done their share except one group,” claims the mayor, pointing to municipal labor. Then comes the media chorus: Only the unions have avoided the pain, says one writer who has clearly never suffered the agony of telling the family there would be no more paychecks.

They are all singing off key. They are backing a vicious double standard that would kick working people after they have been socked by higher costs for shelter and transportation and rising taxes.

They are missing a simple fact: The union is the members. The $600 million the city wants from “labor” would come out of the same pockets that are being emptied by rising rents, mass transit fares, fees and property and sales taxes.

Our researchers have added up the hits on an average DC 37 member:

Subway and bus fare: Just getting to work and back home will cost an extra $5 a week, $240 per year — and a lot more unless you stay in the house all weekend.
Sales tax: A typical DC 37 member spends about $20,000 on taxable items. The city tax on this is going up by $25 a year and the state tax by $50 — total $75.
Rent: The Rent Guidelines Board’s 8.5 percent increase on a two-year lease for an $800 a month apartment comes to $68 per month or $816 a year.
Property tax: The 18.5 percent hike on a $350,000 house totals $334 a year.
And more: CUNY/SUNY tuition could rise by $950 a year, Parks Department recreation fees are up $25 a year, water rates and cigarette taxes are up.

Our members live in the city, we shop here and we take the trains and buses. According to these figures, just the unavoidable basics — rent, sales tax and getting to work — will cost a typical member another $1,131 per year. That’s a lot to take from the table of a working family. Don’t tell us we are not feeling the pain.

The union supported the Legislature’s brave move to adopt a bipartisan budget package over the governor’s vetoes. The plan saved another 10,000 layoffs, but it included the tax increases. Don’t try to tell us we are not already paying our share.

Yet the mayor is still demanding labor cost reductions that would total another $2,000 per city worker. If anyone has been “immune” to sharing the pain, it is big business, which was spared any increase in the corporation tax. The wealthy will pay a temporary income tax surcharge, but the mayor has not gone to business leaders saying, “Your share of the budget gap is $600 million. Pay up or be punished.”

Cold shoulder to workers’ pain
Instead, he issues ultimatums to city workers. We have seen the backside of his negotiator, walking away from the table, more often than we have had honest give-and-take that could produce results. The day before the latest layoffs, the mayor turned a cold shoulder when the Municipal Labor Committee called for around-the-clock talks to avert this tragedy and save thousands of jobs.

He wouldn’t listen when we tried to explain that layoffs have an economic price: the loss of workers’ taxes and the added costs of unemployment benefits, Medicaid, Food Stamps and for many, welfare.

He has turned a deaf ear to our suggestions for savings, although his agencies have quietly adopted a number of our ideas, bringing in revenue and saving jobs.

We remain open to real negotiations, but we are also fighting everywhere we can to reverse the mayor’s outrageous layoffs, restore his massive budget cuts and protect vital public services. The lawsuits we filed against the layoffs are progressing in the courts, our media campaign is getting out our message, and we are strengthening the labor-community-religious coalition.

Our lobbying effort met with tremendous success in Albany, and in June the budget battle shifts to the City Council. White Paper IV, which points to a huge untapped revenue potential in the Finance Department, has received an enthusiastic response in the Legislature and the City Council (see White Paper IV: Dept. of Finance). The Council has included proposals from our White Papers in its alternative fiscal plan, and many of our local leaders will join me at upcoming hearings on the budget.

Working people have given and given, business has not, and the mayor continues to demand more from the public employees who keep this city running. There’s something wrong with this picture, and I am asking our members to stand strong in unity with me as we fight to change it.