On 1 January, 2013, Bill de Blasio, a progressive Democrat, will take the helm of New York, the largest city in the United States and the nation’s financial capital.
There is great hope that with his promise to address economic inequality, he may usher in a new political opportunity for organised labour.
After all, he came in with the backing of the labour-affiliated Working Families Party and with the large healthcare workers union, United Healthcare Workers East (the largest affiliate of the Service Employees International Union).
This is of particular national importance because wealth inequality is one of the city’s most pressing issues.
According to recent figures, the mean income of the lowest fifth of New Yorkers is US$8,993 compared to US$222,871 among the highest fifth.
In Manhattan, the city’s central and most famous borough, the income gap is on par with Sierra Leone, Namibia and Lesotho.
If labour can push de Blasio toward policies which address affordable housing and living wages it will prove that similar policies can work elsewhere in the United States.
The biggest issue for unions in the public sector is settling contracts, as all 60 of the city’s unions have been operating without collective bargaining agreements for three years.
As a result, city employees have not received any wage increases.
Some unionists fear that even though de Blasio has promised to work more closely with the government unions than the outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio will still be mandated by law to work within the current budget restraints until the summer, when a new budget will be announced.
“He’s indicated that he’s going to negotiate with the unions,” said James Parrott, chief economist of the labour-backed Fiscal Policy Institute. “That might represent a departure from the past.”
Retroactive pay
Standing out, however, is the issue of retroactive pay.
Unions maintain that since there have been no new contracts for the past three years, workers should be able to collect the wage increases they should have received during that time.
Part of the reason there were no renewed talks with Mayor Bloomberg is that he ruled out any retroactive pay for workers. Part of labour’s strategy was, then, to back a Democratic candidate who would be more likely to budge on the issue.
However, there’s little indication that unions will receive full retroactive pay in upcoming contracts.
The city only has so much revenue to negotiate over, and increasing retroactivity could result in forcing concessions on future wage increases or health care benefits.
Even John Liu, a Democratic mayoral candidate who ran to de Blasio’s left and had even more trade union support, admitted that full retroactive pay would be impossible to attain.
“I don’t think that anyone in labour thinks there’s a whole hell of a lot of money to play with,” said Arthur Schwartz, a labour lawyer and New York City Democratic Party activist.
“There’ll be a real concentrated effort to settle things fairly rapidly and not have all these unions sitting out there. That is a mammoth task.”
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), for example, had a particularly toxic relationship with Mayor Bloomberg, as the city – like many others in the United States – sought to privatise the public system and weaken protections for teachers.
The union has also been without a collective bargaining agreement since the fall of 2009, longer than any other government union in the city.
Observers hope that de Blasio, who as a city council member had advocated on behalf of the teachers union, will work closely with it not only in terms of collective bargaining but to include it in drafting educational policy.
At the time of writing, UFT President Michael Mulgrew reportedly said he approved of de Blasio’s candidates for schools chancellor.
“De Blasio will treat the UFT like a partner and view the teachers as people that have some genuine input into the process, that they will have something to bring to the table,” Schwartz said.
Other issues
There are other economic issues that the unions will be watching.
Under Bloomberg, labour and other economic justice groups complained that the city granted far too many tax breaks to real estate developers.
These tax breaks not only incentivised large-scale projects which lopsidedly benefitted wealthy tenants and buyers, but also robbed the city of much needed tax income.
A local public radio station recently reported that: “But under de Blasio’s administration, such corporate incentives will likely meet with more skepticism. During the campaign, de Blasio railed against subsidies, and promised to end one program that he said will save the city US$250 million.”
However, despite cries from reactionary press organs during the campaign that de Blasio was an anti-free market crusader (the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post featured a cover with his head next to the hammer and sickle based on the fact that he once visited the Soviet Union), the mayor-to-be has done much to assuage any fears Wall Street or real estate developers have.
He even went before the business-backed Association for a Better New York to tell them that he would rule as a “fiscal conservative.”
De Blasio also met with top Wall Street executives to discuss economic policy.
Unions and the labour left have said they will “hold de Blasio accountable,” but no one inside the movement has suggested anything beyond rallies and demonstrations.
While such actions make for good news stories, they apply little political pressure.
Perhaps one channel they will have is the public advocate, a relatively toothless city position who acts a sort of ombudsperson for city government.
The incoming public advocate is Letitia James, a dedicated economic justice activist and also the first African-American woman to hold citywide office in New York.
Rather than pinning hopes on de Blasio, unions and other groups can organise with James’s office to mount a sort of internal opposition campaign against the Mayor if and when his economic proposals grant too many concessions to Wall Street and real estate.
