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

FOR secretarial worker Dominique Altidor, a typical member of DC 37, our next economic agreement is a family matter. A single mother, she hasn't had a pay increase for over three years - not since March 3, 2009 - but the cost of feeding her children, Cody, 9, and Cassidy, 13, keeps climbing.

Her work at the Sanitation Dept. is a vital part of keeping New York City clean and healthy. But while she has suffered constant rent and fare increases - authorized by appointees of the mayor and governor - there have been no pay increases to match.

"We need a raise to survive," she said.

For me, too, settling our contract is a family matter. When I lead our Negotiating Committee of local presidents back to the bargaining table September 24, I will be speaking for the whole family of DC 37, the 120,000 dedicated, hard-working men and women who keep our city running.

I will be telling the city administration that we need a raise, we deserve a raise and our increased productivity and revenue-generating recommendations have brought enough money into the city treasury to fund a solid raise for all our members.

Although the city ended the last fiscal year with a surplus, the mayor still claims the city is too broke to offer pay increases. He challenged us to fi nd the funds for our own raises.

We did better than that, holding public hearings that proved the administration could save millions of dollars by reining in its $11 billion overspending on contracting out. With the help of our national union, the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, we pressed for federal investigations of the massive waste and fraud in city contracting. We showed the city how to raise revenue without increasing taxes, simply by collecting the taxes businesses owe under the current laws and cancelling unjustified exemptions.

The administration laughed, because it was only a union headed by a former rank-and-file hospital worker saying this, not the billionaire businessman in the mayor's office. However, many of our proposals were quietly implemented, and the revenue came rolling in.

Union ideas pay off in city revenue

• The federal prosecutor arrested contractors for fraud and forced a giant consulting firm to pay the city a half billion dollars to avoid trial on the fraud and overspending in the scandal-ridden CityTime payroll project.
• Finance Commissioner David M. Frankel thanked DC 37 as he told the City Council he is bringing in millions of dollars a year by following union proposals to collect business taxes on cell phone towers and billboards.
• Frankel also paid attention to union recommendations in his own department, replacing 70 percent of the consultants with full-time staff and hiring 61 new union Tax Auditors. For their $45,000 salaries, they each bring the city almost $1 million a year in revenue.

The money is there for across-the-board raises. Our ideas and our members' hard work have put it there, so I will be negotiating tough for a new economic agreement, and our committee will be standing strong.

The administration's expansion of outside contracting consumes one-sixth of the city budget, destroys services, kills jobs and sends billions of dollars of the public's money to the private sector and overseas. The city's alliance with Wall Street greed has hurt our members, damaged the economy and helped destroy the American Dream for millions of families.

We have to turn these policies around, both in our contract bargaining and in the political arena. I need every member of DC 37 to be ready to take action to support our negotiating team. And I need you to be registered to vote to help re-elect Barack Obama, a president working hard to help cities, create jobs and fix the economy - a president who cares about people like Dominique Altidor.