Public Employee Press

Mighty labor rally says:
"Fair contract now!"

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Over 10,000 unionized city workers who have gone without a raise for years rallied at City Hall June 12 to demand new contracts.

The angry, boisterous protesters denounced the anti-labor policies of billionaire Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has let the wage agreements of all municipal employee unions expire.

"We are tired of the mayor's repeated false claims that the city doesn't have the money for fair raises for our members," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, who joined other municipal labor leaders on a podium that looked out on a sea of workers stretching many blocks. "DC 37 has done the research, and we know the money is there."

"We are all here for one reason," said Eddie Rodriguez, president of DC 37 and Local 1549. "We earned it. We deserve it. We want a contract!"

Like Roberts, other labor leaders blasted Bloomberg's claim that the city has no funds to pay for raises without firing employees and cutting public services.

Detectives union President Michael Palladino gave a stunning year-by-year accounting of how the administration began each year crying deficit and then ended with a surplus. Over the past 11 years, the administration has projected deficits totaling $42 billion and wound up with $40 billion in surpluses, he said.

Two days before the rally, Bloomberg fueled the unionists' anger by saying that he would have to lay off 15 percent of the city's 300,000 workers to fund retroactive pay raises. He has also said there will be no raises unless unions agree to premium contributions for health-care plans and pension cuts for future employees.

"We are not asking. We are not begging. We are demanding a raise," said SSEU Local 371 President Anthony Wells. "And we are demanding that our health care and pensions are not touched."

Throughout the lively rally, demonstrators hurled insults and epithets at the mayor and repeatedly chanted, "Fair contract now!" They carried placards with messages including "A Living Wage," "Working People Count, Working People Vote," and "Rich kids get taught. Poor kids get tested."

The Municipal Labor Committee, which represents all the city unions in negotiations on health care and other benefits, called the rally as financially squeezed municipal workers expressed growing resentment over their struggle to get by for years without pay raises.

Bloomberg: Governing for the 1%

In a recent special edition of The Nation magazine called "The Guilded City - Bloomberg's New York," CUNY historian Joshua Freeman wrote, "It seems unlikely that city unions will ever make up the losses they have suffered from frozen wages while living costs have kept rising." Bloomberg's legacy could well be a permanent decrease in the standard of living of the city's public service workers. Speakers and rank-and-file demonstrators said the downward economic spiral of city workers and their families shows that Bloomberg has callously catered to the rich and powerful but backed away from the city's progressive tradition of helping the poor and middle class.

Bloomberg has allowed businesses to break job creation promises that got them big tax breaks. Over three years, the recipients of $600 million in tax giveaways slashed their payrolls by 28,000. Those funds could have paid for 12,000 municipal jobs, according to the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept.

Under Bloomberg, contracting out has skyrocketed despite growing evidence of waste and criminality, while he has aimed to weaken civil service protections and cut the pay of the city's 10,000 trades workers.

"His priority is the 1 percent," said Santos Crespo, president of Dept. of Education Employees Local 372.

"He has trashed government services," retiree activist Jacob Azeke said, "with no consideration for the poor, who really need government."

The Nation documented examples of declining public services:City University of New York tuition is up by a third in the past five years