In looking back to the 1975 fiscal crisis, when New York City teetered near bankruptcy, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg must envy Mayor Abraham D. Beame about one thing above all else.þþMr. Beame obtained huge, if sometimes grudging, cooperation from the powerful union titans who represented 300,000 municipal workers. To help the city stave off bankruptcy, these leaders, often defying angry union members, agreed to a pay freeze, to deferring wage increases and to lending the city billions of dollars from their pension funds.þþEven as they helped Mr. Beame, the labor leaders of the time, led by Victor Gotbaum of the municipal workers' union and Albert Shanker of the teachers' union, were loud-mouthed and cantankerous and sometimes treated him like a 110-pound weakling. Mr. Gotbaum once even called Mr. Beame ÿa basket case.ÿ þþBut despite the fiery words and theatrics, despite pressures from the rank and file to repudiate concessions, when it was crunch time, these union leaders made the tough deals that enabled the city to survive its worst financial crisis.þþÿThose were larger-than-life guys,ÿ said Ken Sunshine, a union consultant who was chief of staff for Mayor David N. Dinkins. þþToday's municipal labor leaders are a different lot from those of 1975, and not just because they have rejected the money-saving concessions demanded by Mr. Bloomberg to help close the city's $3.8 billion budget deficit. Back then, there was a dominant triumvirate: Mr. Gotbaum, executive director of District Council 37, which then, as now, represented 120,000 workers; Mr. Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers; and Barry Feinstein, president of Teamsters Local 237, representing more than 20,000 city workers. þþThey all had firm control of their unions. They all stood up to politicians. They all were fiercely combative at the bargaining table and in front of microphones. In a time of crisis, they were willing to take big risks and cut big deals studded with concessions even when some union members were calling them sellouts — and they still managed to be re-elected to lead their unions time and again.þþÿThese leaders had dominating personalities,ÿ said Richard Steier, a longtime chronicler of municipal labor and editor of The Chief, a weekly newspaper for civil servants. ÿThe people who are running the unions today don't have the same force of personality that the people of the 1970's projected.ÿþþNowadays, there is only one municipal union leader who could be compared with the 1970's threesome: Randi Weingarten, chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee and president of the teachers' union. She shares their outspokenness and combativeness. þþAside from her, most of today's municipal labor leaders seem tiny and timid compared with the giants of the 1970's.þþSome are new and unseasoned and shy away from tough decisions.þþSome have a weak hold on power, and they are in no mood to entertain the $600 million in concessions sought by Mr. Bloomberg because that would irk union members.þþLillian Roberts, District Council 37's executive director, could face a tough re-election battle and is under internal attack for doing too little to invigorate the once-mighty union and for fumbling negotiations on severance pay for laid-off workers. Carl Haynes, president of Teamsters Local 237, is far less visible and outspoken than his predecessor, Mr. Feinstein, and devotes much of his energy to fighting internal dissidents and challengers. þþPatrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, also faces a re-election battle and is railing against the idea of concessions. Stephen J. Cassidy, the first-term president of the Uniformed Fire Fighters Association, has also taken a hard line against concessions.þþMitchell L. Moss, an urban affairs professor at New York University and occasional adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said many of today's crop of municipal labor leaders ÿare not secure in their own capacity and are afraid of looking too weak to their members.ÿþþA longtime adviser to many union leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was understandable that today's leaders were unwilling to take unpopular stands like their 1970's counterparts — who used their power, prestige and persuasiveness to press the rank and file to accept painful concessions. ÿThey have to be secure unto themselves before they can stick their necks out and advocate a policy that might not be popular with their members,ÿ this adviser said.þþMany labor experts say there are two union presidents in the same league as the 1970's leaders, but they do not head municipal unions. They are Dennis Rivera, president of 1199/S.E.I.U., the 240,000-member health care union, and Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, who tangled with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last December in tense negotiations for 34,000 subway and bus workers. þþNotwithstanding their outsized egos, Mr. Gotbaum, Mr. Shanker and Mr. Feinstein were able to work together in a time of crisis, forge a consensus, and cajole, persuade and pressure most other municipal unions to come along.þþLeft largely to her own devices, Ms. Weingarten has been unable to forge agreement among municipal unions on how to respond to Mr. Bloomberg's call for concessions. Some leaders seem willing to meet Mr. Bloomberg halfway, while the leaders of several uniformed unions are resisting even the smallest concession.þþToday's labor leaders resist concessions partly because they feel the city's unions made many concessions in the 1990's, including three and a half years of wage freezes, although city officials argue that their wage gains still exceeded inflation over the decade. But leaders of the uniformed workers' unions argue all the more against concessions, saying that givebacks would be inappropriate for the heroes of ground zero.þþÿOne of the big differences is that during the 1975 crisis, people like Gotbaum, Feinstein and Shanker, they were more unified, they were able to do a lot of stuff in concert,ÿ said William Lynch Jr., a political and labor consultant who was a deputy mayor in the Dinkins administration.þþToday's fractured labor coalition has made numerous proposals, including just one that the Bloomberg administration considers serious — cutting health care costs by $100 million — and several that the administration consider ludicrous, most notably the unions' proposal to use union volunteers to make calls from labor's political phone banks to help collect more than $1 billion in uncollected taxes and fines. þþOn Friday, when the unions and Mr. Bloomberg failed to agree to $600 million in savings, the mayor ordered city agencies to carry out 2,000 threatened layoffs. Layoffs may anger those who lose their jobs, but union leaders recognize that layoffs do not upset the remaining workers nearly as much as concessions do. Mr. Bloomberg has proposed numerous concessions, including a longer work week and fewer vacation days.þþMs. Weingarten noted that the mayor's demands for $600 million in concessions would cost each union member at least $2,000 when workers already face higher taxes, transit fares, rents and college tuition. She asserted that the city's unions have made credible proposals that would save hundreds of millions of dollars.þþÿThis notion of the unions' not trying to be responsive is ridiculous,ÿ Ms. Weingarten said. ÿAt every turn we have tried to be responsive to what they said their savings needs were.ÿþþRaymond D. Horton, former president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said there was a method to the unions' muddle, in that they have thus far avoided making any concessions. ÿThis year they've gotten through unscathed,ÿ he said. ÿThey've done a better job for their members, but a worse job for the city.ÿþþThe 1970's union leaders took some decisions that many workers fretted, even hated. They consented to the state's setting up an Emergency Financial Control Board on which business executives have a large say over the city's finances and government. It had extraordinary powers over the city's finances and government. They also agreed to lend $2.5 billion in union pension money to the city when other investors were too scared. þþWith such steps, union leaders enabled the city to escape bankruptcy and for that they were hailed as saviors, more by the captains of industry than by union members, who often said their leaders capitulated to business executives intent on squeezing municipal workers and city services. ÿThey were considered labor statesmen because they helped the city avoid bankruptcy,ÿ said Joshua B. Freeman, a Queens College labor historian. ÿBut from the point of view of many union members, they didn't do a very good job at all. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. Signed contracts were abrogated. People gave up wage benefits that had been bargained for.ÿþþThere was one huge difference between today's fiscal crisis and that of 1975. Back then, Mr. Beame and the business community warned that unless the union leaders agreed to concessions, the city would plunge into bankruptcy. That terrified labor leaders because they were convinced that bankruptcy would scar the city for decades, as well as endanger workers' pensions, cause union contracts to be scrapped, and persuade the state legislature to take away the right of municipal workers to form unions.þþÿThe guys in the past saw they had a larger responsibility,ÿ said Norman Steisel, who was deputy budget director under Mr. Beame and a deputy mayor under Mr. Dinkins. ÿThey tended to step up and be more responsible and responsive to what was needed to help the city out of its fiscal crisis than the current cast of characters seems willing to be.ÿþþToday's union leaders respond to this criticism by noting that, yes, the labor leaders of the 1970's gave painful concessions, and so did labor leaders a decade ago. With all these concessions made in decades past, today's union leaders say it's someone else's turn to give.þþ
Source: NY Times
