Now that the State Legislature has provided two-thirds of the money toward closing New York City's budget gap, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sees winning concessions from the municipal unions as pivotal to cutting the rest of the deficit.þþMr. Bloomberg has urged the unions to agree to $600 million in labor savings to help close the $3.8 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1. More important, many budget experts say fundamental changes in the work force are crucial to keeping this year's budget crisis and deficits from recurring every year.þþMany labor relations experts say, though, that the mayor has made so many tactical blunders on labor issues that they doubt he will ever persuade the unions to agree to substantial concessions.þþLast Friday, relations grew so frayed between the mayor and the unions representing 300,000 workers that last-minute talks to ward off layoffs broke off in rancor. That day, the mayor ordered that 2,000 of 4,500 threatened layoffs take effect immediately, a move that will inevitably hurt city services, from education to garbage pickups.þþLabor leaders are always reluctant to give up benefits they have won in difficult negotiations, and the leaders point to numerous mayoral actions that have made them even less enthusiastic about granting concessions. They say Mr. Bloomberg has ridiculed them in public, changed signals on them and tried to dictate to them. They also fault Mr. Bloomberg for failing to engage personally in the intense give-and-take normally needed to reach an agreement.þþÿHe had a lot of good will starting out, but he blew it,ÿ said Gregory Mantsios, director of the Labor Resources Center at Queens College. ÿI don't think there was enough engagement or constructive discussion with the unions about what might be. Instead he made fun of their proposals. You don't do that kind of thing publicly when you're trying to make people make accommodations to you.ÿþþSome business-oriented experts say the mayor has failed in other ways, by not making a strong public case for labor concessions and not being tough enough with the unions. They say he should have threatened far more layoffs.þþÿHe thought he could be reasonable with the unions, but the truth is they hold all but one card, which is the layoff card,ÿ said Raymond D. Horton, a business professor at Columbia and a former president of the Citizens Budget Commission. ÿSo the unions really didn't have any incentive to cooperate or be reasonable, since he wasn't ready to play the layoff card in any major way.ÿþþInstead, critics like Dr. Horton said, Mr. Bloomberg has started carrying out all the 4,500 layoffs he was threatening, and further diminished his leverage by announcing that he had withdrawn a ÿdoomsdayÿ threat of 10,500 layoffs. In effect, these critics said, Mr. Bloomberg has unilaterally disarmed.þþThe mayor's communications director, William T. Cunningham, said Mr. Bloomberg did his utmost to persuade the unions to agree to concessions like a longer workweek, fewer vacation days or higher medical copayments to help save the city $600 million this year.þþÿHis administration has done everything possible to close the budget gap,ÿ Mr. Cunningham said. ÿIt is only the Municipal Labor Committee that has failed to step up to the plate,ÿ he added, referring to the group that coordinates the unions' bargaining.þþBut many labor leaders said they granted major concessions in the 1990's like three and a half years of wage freezes. Further, they complained that the $600 million in concessions the mayor seeks would take $2,000 out of the pocket of each union member at a time when they, like all New Yorkers, are facing higher property taxes, rents, tolls and transit fares. All that has made them far from inclined to help Mr. Bloomberg.þþThe mayor's warning about layoffs also flopped, labor relations experts said, because pink slips were not a significant threat to unions representing a third of the city's work force: the police and fire unions, who represented the heroes of ground zero, and the union representing 80,000 teachers, who knew the mayor has made education his top priority.þþMany labor relations experts also place blame for the standoff on Gov. George E. Pataki, who has been notably silent about the unions and their role in helping the city out of its fiscal crisis. They contrast this with the crucial role Gov. Hugh L. Carey played during the city's 1975 fiscal crisis, bringing bankers and real estate magnates to the table and pressing everyone, including the unions, to make concessions.þþSome experts say Mayor Bloomberg should have done more to rope in Mr. Pataki to pressure the unions, but others say the governor was dead set on remaining aloof.þþÿThe governor has been a cipher in all this,ÿ Dr. Horton said.þþSome advocates of labor concessions say the mayor and governor missed an opportunity because the unions might have been pressured into giving sizable labor savings if that was made a condition of the deal, completed earlier this week, for the city to obtain a $2.7 billion rescue package from Albany.þþMany union leaders said Mr. Bloomberg soured them on considering concessions from the very first day that he raised the issue with them, at a breakfast at Gracie Mansion in February. They said they felt the mayor acted like the individualistic entrepreneur he once was, and was more interested in telling them what to do than in negotiating with them. That got their collective backs up.þþÿHe doesn't have a sense of what it's like to engage with a unionized work force where you have to engage in negotiation, not dictation,ÿ said Randi Weingarten, chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee and president of the teachers' union.þþIn March, the mayor made what labor leaders consider another gaffe when he went on the radio and said layoffs were inevitable, no matter what the unions did.þþÿThe No. 1 blunder was to say even if you got the $600 million, there will still be layoffs,ÿ said Arthur Cheliotes, president of Communications Workers Local 1180, which represents 8,000 supervisors and middle managers. ÿIf you want to get to a deal, you have to stick to your part of the deal.ÿþþThe tensions boiled last Friday, as the unions asked for one more chance to pitch ideas to help the city get closer to its goal of $600 million in savings and avert layoffs. The leaders presented several new ideas, including having a union health fund lend the city $200 million at low interest rates. The unions said that they suggested more than $600 million in savings, but that the Bloomberg administration rejected and often ridiculed the proposals.þþInstead of hunkering down in the negotiations usually required to produce an agreement, the union leaders said, James F. Hanley, the city`s labor commissioner, abruptly shut down the talks.þþÿWhen you have the unions saying, `We're ready to help, we're ready to go forward,' but management doesn't like what it hears, that doesn't mean you shouldn't meet,ÿ said Barry Feinstein, who as president of a Teamsters local helped resolve the 1975 fiscal crisis. ÿSometimes it takes some hollering and screaming.ÿþþThe Bloomberg administration said it did not take the proposals seriously because they hardly added up to the savings the unions are touting and because many of the ideas just push expenses into future years. They also do not address greater productivity, a major goal of the Bloomberg administration. þþMr. Cunningham, Mr. Bloomberg's spokesman, noted that some union leaders have said they preferred layoffs to concessions and added that concessions anger the vast majority of union members, whose votes they need to for re-election. þþÿThey want to complain about the mayor's tactics and statements, but that's a smokescreen for the fact that they have let their people down,ÿ Mr. Cunningham said. ÿThey did not protect their members from layoffs, and that's what they're paid to do.ÿþþþ
Source: NY Times
