May 31, 2013
By Marc Bussanich
New York, NY—The day after mayoral John Liu said he would enact retroactive pay for city employees, mayorals Bill de Blasio and Christine Quinn said they would backdate pay raises with concessions. Watch Video
Bill de Blasio gave a speech at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School about how he would as mayor close the city’s growing and alarming income inequality gap. The center’s director, Andrew White, read a question submitted by an audience member how would Mr. De Blasio resolve outstanding labor contracts that some analysts say could cost the city nearly $8 billion out of the 2015 budget.
“The fact is to solve that problem is going to take very complex, private negotiations to figure out what we can do in the short term and the long term to recognize the limits on what we can do,” said de Blasio.
Picking up an endorsement for mayor from the United Automobile Workers Region 9A (New York and New England) at City Hall, some of whose members are on strike against Legal Services, Council Speaker Christine Quinn said everything will have to be on the table to resolve outstanding municipal labor contracts.
“We all know that municipal workers deserve a pay increase and we all know that’s going to happen. But the city’s long-term fiscal situation means that in order to help pay for that, the city and unions together are going to have to come into a room, revisit health care costs and other benefits and have those kinds of negotiations,” said Quinn.
She noted that unlike the other candidates in the race she’s the only person in the race to work with organized labor to prevent layoffs.
“We’ll need to work with labor to bring them into the room with us when we have needed to, like preventing the layoffs of school teachers and other school staff last year and get those unions to work with us to put suggestions for concessions on the table.”
Follow Marc Bussanich on Twitter marc@laborpress.org
