New York City’s powerful municipal labor unions have been unusually quiet as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg moves to cut the city’s budget, but a fight appears to be brewing over efforts to trim pensions.þþThe unions have remained silent as the city’s economy and budget have soured, partly because Mr. Bloomberg has worked hard to maintain good relations with labor, and partly because the unions lack leaders like the cantankerous, outspoken giants of municipal crises past, like Albert Shanker and Victor Gotbaum. þþMoreover, some labor experts suggested that Mr. Bloomberg had delayed making any painful cuts until after announcing his desire for a third term because he did not want to anger the unions.þþNonetheless, if the city’s budget situation deteriorates, as many experts predict, and if the mayor starts taking tougher actions — like laying off workers or pushing for less generous pensions for future employees — then, labor leaders warn, they will put up a fight. þþDuring past budgetary crunches, municipal unions have sometimes taken a combative approach, sometimes a cooperative one, as mayors have undertaken various deficit-fighting measures, including a two-year wage freeze in the 1990s and layoffs and wage deferrals during the 1975 fiscal crisis. þþEdward Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations, did little, in an interview, to reassure labor about the possibility of painful cuts. “The mayor is not going to preclude any option, given the circumstances we find ourselves in,” he said.þþSome fiscal watchdog groups are pressing Mr. Bloomberg to move quickly to take deficit-cutting actions that could infuriate municipal unions, including requiring many city employees to start paying health care premiums and creating a new, less generous, fifth tier of pensions for all future city employees. þþRandi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said it would be unfair to penalize municipal workers.þþ“At the first moment of trouble, the city shouldn’t go after the people who are the backbone of this city,” said Ms. Weingarten, who recently stepped down as head of the Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group for municipal unions. “Here we have a situation where the gazillionaires have created a mortgage crisis and credit crisis, and a lot of well-off people have benefited. And so it would be dead wrong to ask workers who average pensions of $19,000 a year to be sacrificed.”þþMr. Skyler said city agencies would soon make recommendations about how they hope to meet the mayor’s goal of cutting agency budgets across the board by 2.5 percent this year and 5 percent next year. That means cuts of $500 million this year and $1 billion next year. And some budget experts warn that there might be more, deeper rounds of cuts.þþ“As far as cuts in different agencies and how they will affect the work force, we’re in the beginning of the process,” Mr. Skyler said. “We’ve been through tough times before, and we’re entering this period with a spirit of partnership.” þþMr. Skyler said the mayor favored legislation to create a fifth pension tier, which would give future hires a smaller pension than current or retired city workers have. Under state law, the city is prohibited from reducing the pensions promised to current employees.þþ“The mayor has advocated for a fifth tier in the past, and it’s certainly something, if there’s an opening, we will pursue again,” Mr. Skyler said.þþArthur Cheliotes, president of a communications workers’ local representing 9,800 municipal employees, most of them middle managers, assailed the idea of a new pension tier.þþ“That’s the wrong solution,” he said. “Too many Americans don’t have enough to retire on as we’ve seen 401(k)’s turn into 101(k)’s. If we’re planning to attack pensions, then we need to look at this again.”þþCharles Brecher, research director for the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed watchdog group, said that because of the stock market’s recent drop, the city would have to contribute far more to finance pensions for current employees. As a result, he said, the city should seek to create a less generous pension tier, which could save the city billions of dollars over the next decades.þþ“The mayor has put a 7 percent increase in property taxes on the table, and at some point, people might say, ‘You can’t call for more taxes without asking for some savings from the municipal work force,’ ” Mr. Brecher said.þþMr. Bloomberg’s cost-cutting moves have met little protest partly because the city’s unions are waiting for him to announce specific cuts and whether they will involve layoffs. Several union presidents said they were holding their fire because they have developed a good working relationship with the mayor.þþ“At this point I’m not worried about layoffs,” said Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association and the new chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee. “When the mayor says, ‘We’re not near layoffs,’ I have to believe him.”þþMr. Nespoli said he was reassured that the mayor seemed intent on cutting municipal services as little as possible to help keep New York an attractive and safe place.þþMr. Bloomberg’s relations with the city’s unions have improved since he stopped demanding that raises be financed by productivity-increasing concessions. Also helping keep the peace are the sizable contracts the city has signed with several unions that have rarely hesitated to attack Mr. Bloomberg, most notably the teachers’ union and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest police union.þþJoshua B. Freeman, a labor historian at the City University of New York, said, “Settlements averaging raises of 4 percent a year without any significant givebacks means that, at least for the moment, things have quieted down without any flashpoints.” þþWhile union officials say the 4 percent raises make sense, considering that fuel and food prices have soared, some budget experts, like Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the Independent Budget Office, warns that the 4 percent raises on top of fast-rising health care and pension costs could strain the city’s budget.þþAt the moment, city officials are bargaining intensely with several important unions, including the Uniformed Firefighters Association and District Council 37, the city’s largest public employee union. That, union leaders acknowledge, has discouraged them from protesting any feared budget cuts.þþ“We’re always concerned about budget cuts because we’re the people who deliver the services to the community,” said Lillian Roberts, executive director of District Council 37, which represents about 120,000 city workers.þþ“But when you’re negotiating a contract, you don’t get into picking a fight.”þþ
Source: NY Times
