CWA 1180 - Political Action

Not on our backs again!
January 2003

In December, the Mayor and the City Council inked a midyear budget adjustment that cut $830 million from this year's budget, and raised property taxes by 18.5%. The additional budget cuts followed on the heels of an announcement by the Department of Education and the School Construction Authority that they would lay off hundreds of workers each. Meanwhile the Transit Authority said that a fare hike is inevitable, and Mayor Bloomberg announced his intention to actually cut income taxes in the midst of this budget crisis while wresting $600 million in "union concessions" from city workers. And the coming year promises to be even worse: the projected gap for the 2004 budget is $6.4 billion.

Every single one of these developments spells bad news for New York City's working people. Local 1180 members and other city workers will feel the effects twice: first as city workers, facing job insecurity, speedups and the frustration of serving the public with ever less adequate resources and personnel; and second as working New Yorkers, paying more while the services they depend on decline. In a word, the city's budget crisis is shaping up to be a huge hit on the working class.

From City Hall to the New York Times, officials, pundits and "experts" have all portrayed this process as inevitable. Tough times mean political leaders have no choice but to enact these painful measures, we are told.

But that's a lie. There is nothing inevitable about the particular solutions being offered to the budget crisis. There are other ways to fill the gap—ways that distribute the burden much more fairly. There are other revenue sources available, and there are alternatives to deep service cuts. The claim that we have "no choice" hides the fact that political leaders do have a choice. The choices they have made so far reflect the influence of wealthy constituents and business lobbies on government. If we want City Hall to make a different set of choices to balance the 2004 budget, we are going to have to make our voices heard.

Class bias in spending cuts

"A lot of the services that are going to be cut are geared to minority, poor and low-income people. Things like libraries, with shorter hours. Libraries are the only way that some kids have access to books and computers," said Irma Smith, an 1180 member from the Department of Transportation and a student in the Urban Leadership Program studying the budget process. Libraries took a $22 million hit in the latest round of cuts, which means the loss of one day a week in service.

Other examples abound. Public health cuts—$28 million at the Department of Health and another $8 million at the Health and Hospitals Corporation—means funding cuts for programs for children with asthma, programs to deal with lead poisoning, primary care for the poor, pest control and others. These cuts won't be felt on the Upper East Side.

The list goes on. The point is that budget cuts, which equal service cuts, are one option for addressing the budget crisis, but it's an option with a distinct class bias: cuts in social spending affect working and poor people more than the well-off.

Service cuts also have a harmful ripple effect that goes well beyond the individuals who lose vital public services. Clean streets, decent schools, safe neighborhoods and good public transportation keep people and businesses in New York. And this fact is not lost on Mayor Bloomberg. Indeed, the mayor's recognition and public acknowledgement that the city cannot simply cut its way out of the budget crisis is an important positive development. In the spring he refused to consider tax increases, but organized public demands for progressive taxation and the end of the 2002 electoral cycle contributed to a different position he took in the fall. Support for revenue increases has also come from the City Council.

All this has put taxes back on the agenda, which is a good thing, because the anti-tax rhetoric of the last two decades has had the effect of starving the public sector. But which taxes, and taxes on whom are critical questions-and on these questions Bloomberg has shown his class loyalties to be distinctly upper class.

More tax cuts for the rich

The mayor's tax proposals, like his budget cuts, place additional burdens on the working class while asking nothing from those who can afford to pay more. In November, Bloomberg proposed a 25% increase in the property tax, a decrease in the city's income tax and a commuter tax.

Property taxes in New York City have been comparatively low, and many observers from various political points of view thought an adjustment in that tax was appropriate. But the size of the bite (18.5% after a compromise with the City Council) is steep, and because it is applied across the board, the effect of the increase is regressive: it hits those with less much harder. Moreover, it will exacerbate the housing crisis.

"The property tax hike is going to be a huge burden," said 1180 member Charles Houston from the Department of Employment and another Urban Leader. "Rents will go up, landlords will pass that on. We're talking about considerable rent hikes. Some people will lose their homes and be homeless."

But if the property tax hike is a hardship for working New Yorkers, Bloomberg's income tax proposal is a slap in the face, adding insult to injury. Bloomberg has not only said—in as many words—that he does not want to increases taxes on the rich, he has proposed tax cuts that would put additional thousands of dollars in the pockets of people making hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars a year. All this while working New Yorkers struggle with higher taxes and rents, reduced services and most likely a coming transit fare increase.

Reinstating a commuter tax is the only part of Bloomberg's plan that asks those with more to carry any burden. Commuters' incomes are on average nearly triple those of city residents. Of course, both the income tax cuts and the commuter tax have to be approved by Albany, and the latter will be difficult at best to achieve in a legislature that has been historically insensitive to the city's needs.

Perhaps the most galling part of these tax proposals is that they come on top of years in which the well-off already got multiple tax breaks—and it is precisely those tax cuts that have created the city's budget crisis in the first place. While the economic fallout from the September 11 attacks and the recession have added to the city's woes, the heart of the budget problem is a structural deficit. Giuliani-era tax cuts are costing the city $2.6 billion a year, and those cuts overwhelmingly benefited the rich and the business community.

Mayor wants union concessions

Budget cuts invariably mean city workers are asked to "do more with less." But on top of that, the mayor is also seeking $600 million in largely unspecified "union concessions" from municipal unions. Details are sketchy, but indications are that healthcare co-payments are on the mayor's agenda.

Meanwhile, pay raises for city workers are clearly not on the mayor's agenda. He has vowed publicly to give no increases that are not funded entirely by productivity gains. As part of that position, he has said that he will not grant any retroactive increases (since productivity cannot be improved for time that has already gone by). This amounts to a pledge to offer 0% raises, since the current contract is already six-months expired and serious bargaining has not even begun for a new one.

Bloomberg has also wielded the budget ax.

First on the chopping block have been the Department of Education and the School Construction Authority (SCA). Layoffs at both agencies were announced in November. The Department of Education, which took a hit of $120 million in the midyear budget adjustment, has laid off 475 people, including 27 Local 1180 members. At SCA, the exact number is unclear as of now, but also in the hundreds.

The effect of layoffs goes beyond the families who will now be without a paycheck. Who will do the work of the workers laid off? Those left behind will scramble to make up the difference, but no matter what City Hall says about "doing more with less," the loss of hundreds of workers and hundreds of millions of dollars will hurt public education.

There are alternatives

Local 1180 and others are not taking all this lying down. For starters, the union has fought for every single job. More broadly, 1180 and others have insisted that the burden of the difficult economic times must be shared fairly by everyone in the city.

"It is only fair that everyone who participates in the city share the burden. It should definitely not be done on the backs of struggling working people," said Houston, summing up how many working people feel. "The ultimate quality of life is if you can live in this city and send your kids to school in this city."

The calls from City Hall, from the business community and its mouthpiece, the New York Times, to "share the pain" of the budget crisis ring hollow, because so far the burden has been borne entirely by the working class. "Their idea of sharing the pain is setting the rules and then we suffer," said Smith. "Poor people are paying more than the rich that can afford it. Those that can afford to pay more are being asked [under Bloomberg's tax proposal] to pay less! Me, as a single parent with a child in college, it's extremely difficult. I'm sure that next year I'll get a notice that my rent is going up, plus subway fare of $2."

Alternative solutions that do spread the burden out have been suggested by a number of sources. A number of City Council members have come out plainly saying that income taxes on the rich need to be increased.

The Working Families Party put together an alternative revenue proposal that would close $5.7 billion of the $6.4 billion budget gap for 2004 through progressive income tax increases, reinstatement of the commuter tax, reinstatement of the stock transfer tax and the end to several corporate tax loopholes. City Project, an independent budget watchdog, is calling for a serious look at business taxes and especially some of the exemptions businesses enjoy.

Public-sector unions have also stepped up to present alternatives to budget cuts and layoffs and thereby preserve vital city services. The Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 presented its own research to the MTA to demonstrate that costs can be saved, service improved and a fare hike avoided. One of the points TWU Local 100 made is that MTA could save tens of millions of dollars by using in-house staff instead of outside contractors. DC 37 similarly concluded that layoffs at the Department of Education could be entirely avoided if the agency simply moved some of its outsourced work back into the department itself, where unionized civil servants can do the job better and cheaper.

A matter of political will

It is not a lack of alternatives that is driving the current anti-worker proposals for closing the budget gap. It's a lack of political will. Wealthy and business interests have more power and influence and personal connections at City Hall and in Albany than workers do; and so solutions that serve their interests dominate there. But workers do have enormous potential power, because it is we, after all, that make the city run, and we have far greater numbers.

We have to organize and mobilize and show our power. It will take massive demonstrations, angry protests and a host of other actions, in order to get a 2004 budget that is not balanced on the backs of the working class.

Information for this article comes from City Project, gothamgazette.com and the Working Families Party. Special thanks to Bonnie Brower.

Back to Political Action page