CWA 1180 - News

Coalition or go it alone?
by Bill Henning
November 2002

Insanity, the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and expecting a different result. If that is so, perhaps the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) needs to rethink its strategy concerning the next round of collective bargaining with the city.

Most municipal unions find themselves in the same position as Local 1180, our contract having run out June 30. Our wages remain frozen at the old level until we renegotiate. Meanwhile, the city faces an ever-increasing budget deficit. What to do, what to do.

In the last round of bargaining, the MLC suffered division, largely due to the fraudulent way DC 37's then-leaders had accepted the previous pattern-setting contract with its infamous "double zeroes." So no union trusted another to engage in a meaningful coalition around wages, although joint bargaining over health benefits and pension issues did take place. Different unions decided they could make a better case and therefore set a better pattern. (For years, the city has maintained that municipal unions essentially receive the same "pattern" of compensation in order to avoid "leapfrogging.")

The teachers correctly noted how underpaid they were in comparison to surrounding areas. Likewise, the police, with their newly won right to pursue impasse proceedings through the state's Public Employment Relations Board rather than the city's Board of Collective Bargaining, felt they had a better chance to match gains won in neighboring Nassau and Suffolk counties. Meanwhile, a newly rejuvenated DC 37, in a refreshingly transparent process, reached an agreement that Local 1180 quickly mimicked. All in all, it represented an acceptable package for the time, albeit one the cops and teachers thought they could improve on.

History has proved them wrong. Both groups got roughly the same pattern, with some tweaking for a longer workday and a longer term in the case of the teachers, and a modest deviation in the case of the police.

Now as we confront the need to win a contract from a city under enormous financial strain, the MLC needs to fight to create a different climate. With a $5 billion hole in next year's budget, raising additional revenues has to be on the table. After all, bridging the gap through personnel cuts—besides the obviously unacceptable devastation of public services—won't get the job done. To save a billion dollars, you have to cut 30,000 jobs. That's just nuts.

But we ought not wait until the climate is right. The era of waiting past contract expiration dates must end. We should be mobilizing now to pressure the city to pay its workforce decent salaries. And learning at least from the last round, the MLC should band together into one big coalition, 200,000 workers strong, and put our best position forward in a unified manner to negotiate over compensation.

Or we could do it the way we did the last time. If we do, though, can we really expect a different result?

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