BALCONY MEMBERS LEDWITH AND LOCKER REFUTE NEED FOR CONSTRUCTION UNION WORK RULE REVISIONS

Robert Ledwith, Business Manager and Financial Secretary Treasurer of Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Ironworkers Local 46 spoke out against construction rule revisions, describing work rules as “the final attack on working people in our country.”

Michael Locker of Locker Associates described the report as reflecting “the deterioration of labor management relations nationwide.” BALCONY members Robert Ledwith and Michael Locker called for bridging the interests of business and labor, citing the long history of labor unions. Locker stated, “the challenge is to construct real partnerships between labor, management, and government that can address these [work rule and communication] problems.”

Ledwith and Locker made their remarks at a panel discussion June 9 regarding a report issued by the Regional Plan Association: “Construction Costs in New York City: A Moment of Opportunity.” Other participants included Steve Spinola of REBNY, Jay Badame of Tishman, Jeffrey Levine of Levine Builders and Douglaston Development, and Donald Capoccia of BFC Partners.

Read the Ledwith presentation: Ledwith

Read the Locker presentation: Locker

FPI Report on NYC Unemployment Trends

The State of Working New York City 2011:

Scant Recovery for Workers – Some See Gains but Recession Conditions Persist for Most

The effects of the Great Recession of 2008-2009 will persist for many years to come. This is particularly true for the average worker and for the operation of the labor market. Even though the payroll job decline in New York City was more moderate than in the nation overall, unemployment doubled in the city as it did for the country as a whole. While the national recession officially came to an end two years ago in June 2009, unemployment remains extremely high in both New York City and in the United States. The tepid pace and uncertain course of the recovery promise to keep unemployment unusually high for months, and possibly years, to come.

This report provides an in-depth examination of trends in the New York City labor market in the early stages of the current recovery. The report looks at where job growth has been occurring, how that compares to the U.S. overall, and at the extent of the under-utilization of labor and the long-term nature of unemployment in the city. Labor market trends are analyzed in detail by demographic characteristic—gender, race/ethnicity, age, education, and nativity. The analysis demonstrates that young workers, particularly recent college graduates, have been the main beneficiaries of the first year or so of recovery in the New York City labor market. Comparison with data for the United States demonstrates the unique character of New York City’s recovery.

For the full (40 pages) report, click here: FPI Report

For state, labor deals fall short

Major labor union deals help, but state still has a way to go to reach savings target

By CASEY SEILER State editor

ALBANY — Recent tentative agreements reached by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s negotiators and the state’s two largest public employee unions will achieve an estimated $148 million in savings in the current fiscal year, which ends in March.

But while that’s not exactly lunch money, it’s still only a third of the way to Cuomo’s workforce savings target for the current fiscal year.

The savings would come from a lack of broad-based salary increases, plus health care givebacks such as an increase in the share of insurance premiums paid for by workers and retirees. The full five-year agreement includes three years without general raises (with a cash bonus in the third year), followed by two years of increases roughly matching the rate of inflation.

But even if the roughly 120,000 members of the Civil Service Employees Association and the Public Employees Federation ratify those agreements before the end of the summer, the state will need to find an additional $302 million to match the enacted budget.
The Cuomo administration says those funds will come from three sources: similar agreements yet to be reached with other state unions; related savings gleaned from non-unionized workers and retirees; and an anticipated bump in the rate of attrition, or employees leaving state service. Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto declined to break down how much the administration is anticipating from each source, saying that it could complicate future labor negotiations.

The first category comprises roughly 70,000 in workers in other bargaining units, more than half of them SUNY or CUNY employees who will be negotiating with Cuomo’s team. The remainder includes members of several law enforcement unions, such as State Police and corrections officers, who are subject to binding arbitration due to negotiating impasses.

Achieving that portion of the $302 million “presumes that Cuomo will be able to knock out State Police, correctional officers and other unionized employees with three zeros,” said Lee Adler, who teaches public sector collective bargaining and labor law at Cornell University’s ILR School, referring to the lack of salary increases.

The second savings category contains so-called “unrepresented workers,” like retirees who would pay higher health insurance costs under the agreements reached with CSEA and PEF, plus the 9,000 or so “management/confidential” state employees who can’t take part in collective bargaining.

Barbara Zaron, president of the state Organization of Management Confidential Employees, said extending the PEF-CSEA deal to M/Cs would put them even deeper in the hole after former Gov. David Paterson rescinded a total of 7 percent in raises for M/Cs in the two previous fiscal years — increases that CSEA and PEF members received according to the provisions of their most recent contracts.

“We’re significantly behind where PEF and CSEA are right now,” said Zaron, whose group represents M/Cs but is barred from collective bargaining on their behalf. Even so, OMCE has pleaded its case to administration officials, arguing the current salary situation incentivizes good workers to reject promotions that would boost them out of union positions, and creates situations in which supervisors make less than those they manage.
And then there’s the prospect of winnowing down the state workforce due to attrition. While the departure of a large number of baby boom members has been expected, that rush to the exit could be hurried along by the prospect of three years without raises.
Then again, maybe not: “Will workers in a dire economy step aside from state employment when there are no likely employment alternatives?,” said Adler.

Needs collide in pact offer

by Rick Karlan

ALBANY — Union leaders will have to bridge a generation gap in the coming weeks as they work to sell tentative contract agreements with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration.

By the end of summer, members of both the Public Employees Federation and Civil Service Employees Association will have a chance to vote on the five-year deals, which are almost identical.

PEF’s leaders and the state announced their agreement Saturday.

[PEF President Kenneth Brynien speaks during an education rally, to protest against proposed cuts in state education funding, at the Capitol in Albany, NY on Tuesday, March 22, 2011. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)]

Both unions will have to grapple with the competing needs of internal factions. At one end of the spectrum are veteran state employees, who are not used to concessions such as furloughs, three years without raises and higher health insurance premiums that will result in lower take-home pay for many. “There will be some workers who feel that way — why should they give something so someone else can keep their job?” observed Rebecca Givan, assistant professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University.

“I’ve got hard feelings about the contract,” said one veteran downstate employee who opposes the lack of raises. Like many employees, he spoke on condition of anonymity.

New York’s Triborough Amendment ensures that even without a contract, current working terms and conditions — including existing health insurance premium percentages — remain in place.

Insurance costs currently place 10 percent or 25 percent of the total cost of premiums for individuals or families, respectively. The contract deal aims to increase that to 16 and 31 percent.

On the other side of the generation gap are relatively younger workers, who tend to be lower on the seniority lists. Under the state workforce’s last-in-first-out rules, they would be the ones laid off if the contracts are rejected.

With that in mind, union leaders such as PEF President Ken Brynien and CSEA President Danny Donohue will likely focus on the concept of solidarity within their union ranks and the importance of protecting newer workers in what one of the worst economies in nearly a century.

“That’s the challenge for the union leaders when they are selling the deal; that it creates some solidarity,” Givan said.

“I think they’ll talk about the economic climate,” she said, referring to the poor job prospects that someone laid off from state government would face. The state’s unemployment rate was above 8 percent in May.

In exchange for the lack of pay hikes and higher health insurance costs, Cuomo is offering assurances against layoffs for each union that would occur if either deal doesn’t go through.

Saying the 2011-12 budget calls for $450 million in workforce savings, Cuomo has said he will lay off up to 9,800 employees as a last resort.

Still, the hard-times contract will rile longtime state workers who know that their retirement pensions are calculated on their highest-earning years. And these state veterans make up a sizable voting bloc.

According to the Civil Service Department’s annual Workforce Management Report issued last August, more than 32,000 of the 165,184 civil service workers on the payroll in January 2010 (or 19 percent) were expected to retire in the next five years.

The contract does offer some pluses to the state’s graying workforce — or at least it would avoid significant disruptions.

That’s because in addition to 9,800 people who could become jobless, thousands more would see demotions and pay cuts after being forced to “retreat” to lower-level jobs in order to remain employed.

“We still believe the vast majority will support this because they recognize the fact that these are very unsettled times,” said CSEA spokesman Steve Madarasz, who downplayed the idea of a conflict between younger and older workers.

Another plus: In contrast with an earlier proposal for another union, the PEF and CSEA deals don’t diminish a retiree’s ability to credit unused sick time against the cost of ongoing health care coverage.

This credit can greatly lower insurance costs during the golden years.

That was a point of contention when Cuomo’s negotiators wanted to limit these credits for the 1,060 law enforcement officers in the ALES unit of the Council 82 union.

Those union members handily voted down the contract and have since moved to leave Council 82 and start their own union, the Police Benevolent Association of NYS.

On Friday, Council 82 said it wouldn’t oppose the breakaway move for ALES officers, a group that includes forest rangers, plus Environmental Conservation, State Park and SUNY campus police.

“As soon as we are official, we intend to start negotiating,” said Daniel DeFedericis, the retired head of the state troopers union, who is starting the new PBA.

Ultimately, union officials hope to convince their members that they are bargaining in unusual times. One approach may be to remind members that the main opponent is a bad economy rather than the administration.

“We’re not fighting the employer. We’re fighting the economics,” said Mary Ellen Shea, a retired Massachusetts state labor mediator and arbitrator who is now a consultant, when asked what she would tell union members.

Lawmakers — even those who are stalwart union supporters — agree with that idea. Albany-area Sen. Neil Breslin, in a radio interview on “Capitol Pressroom,” called the deals “a trade-off.”

“I don’t think anybody is happy with the contracts,” said Breslin. “(But) it’s a very difficult economic time, and I’m delighted there are no layoffs and the people in my district will continue to have a job.”

PEF has reached a tentative contract agreement with the state

Albany – The New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) has reached a tentative contract agreement with the state. As a result of the conceptual agreement, the governor has agreed to rescind the planned layoffs of nearly 1,000 PEF members.

“This was a difficult agreement to reach, but with our members’ jobs in peril and the state’s fiscal hardship we’ve stepped up and made the necessary sacrifices,” said PEF President Ken Brynien.

“The agreement will preserve our members jobs and careers while bringing long term fiscal stability to the state. We are confident this is the best agreement that could be negotiated in the current environment,” Brynien said.

The agreement provides the state with the required savings needed to preserve PEF’s share of the 9,800 jobs targeted if the $450 million in Labor Management Partnership savings were not achieved.

“This agreement reflects the financial reality of the times,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo. “I am pleased that we could avoid these layoffs, protect the workforce and the taxpayer,” Cuomo said.

“This agreement could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedication of PEF’s contract team made of up union members representing a variety of titles and agencies across the state,” said PEF Contract Chair Tom Comanzo.

PEF is the state’s second-largest, state-employee union, representing 56,000 professional, scientific and technical employees.

New York Unions Press Members to Accept Deal

New York labor leaders, spooked by public workers’ rejection of negotiated concessions in Connecticut, are beginning a carefully planned campaign to persuade more than 100,000 state employees to accept a wage freeze and other measures in order to avoid sweeping layoffs.

By Thomas Kaplan

Danny Donohue, president of the Civil Service Employees Association, the state’s largest public union, in Albany in February at a rally for Wisconsin workers

The state’s largest union of public workers, the Civil Service Employees Association, has sent contract negotiators across the state as part of an effort to persuade health care, maintenance and clerical workers that it would be better to stomach furloughs, benefit cuts and three years without a salary increase than to risk losing thousands of jobs as the state cuts costs.

The second-largest union, the Public Employees Federation, also plans to campaign for its members’ approval after agreeing Saturday to nearly identical concessions. Together, the two unions represent more than half of New York’s public work force.

The reaction of rank-and-file members is a test both for union leaders, who are trying to protect jobs in a political climate that is increasingly hostile to public employees, and for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is trying to rein in spending without alienating labor, a traditional Democratic constituency. Mr. Cuomo won approval of a state budget that depends on $450 million in labor savings, and he has warned of as many as 9,800 layoffs if union members do not agree to concessions. He has also proposed limiting pension benefits for future employees.

“There’s a lot politically riding on it for the governor,” said Joshua B. Freeman, a labor historian at Queens College. “It’s a potential pattern-setter for other state employees, and possibly even New York City municipal contracts.”

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat elected last year, said he was mindful of events both in Connecticut, where union members created a budget crisis last month by rejecting concessions agreed to by labor leaders and a Democratic governor, and in Albany, where a small union of law enforcement officers rejected in May a deal the governor had championed as “a model the other unions negotiating with the state can follow.”

“I’m confident, but it is crazy out there, and would I guarantee anything right now?” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview last week. “No.”

Union leaders are leaving nothing to chance. The Civil Service Employees Association will mail ballots to its 66,000 members on Friday, but only after the union’s president, Danny Donohue, sends a mailing urging them to agree to the concessions.

“These are not ordinary times, and we worked hard to balance shared sacrifice with fairness and respect,” Mr. Donohue wrote in the mailing, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times. He added of the contract, “Equally important, it provides job security and prevents massive layoffs.”

The proposed contract is unlikely to thrill many of the union’s members, who earn $40,000 a year on average. The contract, which Mr. Cuomo called “a tremendous deal for the state,” calls for a three-year freeze on base wages and 2 percent raises for the next two years. By contrast, the previous contract gave employees 3 percent raises for each of the first three years and a 4 percent raise in the final year.

The new contract would also require workers to take nine furlough days, and it would increase health insurance costs for employees. For example, state employees currently must pay 10 percent of their individual health insurance premiums; under the new contract, the contribution would rise to 12 percent for lower-paid workers and 16 percent for higher-paid ones.

The deal that Mr. Cuomo made with the Public Employees Federation is virtually identical. The union, with 56,000 members, reached the agreement only six days before hundreds of union members were scheduled to be laid off, and the union’s president, Kenneth Brynien, acknowledged as much in announcing it.

“We are confident this is the best agreement that could be negotiated in the current environment,” Mr. Brynien said.

As part of the deals, the state has agreed to exempt union members from broad-based layoffs for two years, and that provision has been a major selling point for Civil Service Employees Association members.

Abraham Benjamin, 53, a local association leader who is a treatment supervisor at Bronx Psychiatric Center, has spent many lunch breaks for the past few weeks explaining the terms of the contract deal to employees in New York City.

“Initially, they’re very, very disappointed,” he said.

But Mr. Benjamin, who has been a state worker for three decades, said his audiences generally came around.

“I won’t say I like it, but in the environment that we are in, I feel it’s a good deal,” he said. “I explain to them that they can hold out as much as they want, but we also have to be realistic.”

Michael Weissman, 55, of Amsterdam, northwest of Albany — a youth division aide for the Office of Children and Family Services who has worked for the state for more than two decades — said he agreed that the concessions were necessary.

“It’s not what we want,” Mr. Weissman said. “But when you’re in tough financial times, everybody’s got to give. If I’m making the same amount of money and I don’t get raises, but at least I have the job, that’s O.K.”

Some of the debate among union members is happening online. Facebook pages for Civil Service Employees Association offices around the state show a smattering of complaints about the contract deal, mostly centered on the lack of raises and higher health care costs, as well as the suggestion that the union should have taken a firmer stance against Mr. Cuomo. But when a woman posted a message last month on one of the Facebook pages, urging her fellow state employees to vote against the contract, a union staff member wrote back, “Would you rather face a layoff?”

Association members must mail back their ballots by Aug. 12, and the results are expected to be announced Aug. 15. The Public Employees Federation’s executive board is scheduled to discuss that union’s pact on Aug. 11, and only after that would it be sent to rank-and-file members for a vote.

The ratification process in New York is simpler than that in Connecticut, where collective bargaining rules require the approval of 14 of the 15 public employee unions, with the supporting unions representing 80 percent of the affected workers. The vote last month met neither threshold, though 57 percent of union members supported the contract.

In New York, the governor can negotiate contracts on a union-by-union basis and usually needs only a majority vote of each union’s membership to win ratification. And although the first contract Mr. Cuomo negotiated, with the Law Enforcement Officers Union Council 82, faced organized opposition, no such campaign has emerged within the larger unions.

A few weeks ago, one state employee started a Facebook page to persuade C.S.E.A. members to reject the contract. But as of Sunday, it had only six supporters.

“It’s not inconceivable that it could fail, even without organized opposition,” Mr. Freeman, the labor historian, said. “But the fact there hasn’t been that would seem to indicate some level of outrage has not been reached.”

Creating Good Jobs for Our Communities: Pension Dollars at Work

Creating Good Jobs for Our Communities: Pension Dollars at Work

Michael Wasser, March 2011

Over the past year, defined benefit retirement systems, known more commonly as pensions, have been the target of political attacks. Newly elected governors in states ranging from Wisconsin to Florida argue that the public employee pensions are a fiscal burden to taxpayers.1 Conservative groups like the Hudson Institute assert that defined benefit plans negotiated as part of collective bargaining agreements create problems through underfunding.2 This attack on pensions flanks the assault on unions, as union members are more than three times more likely to have a pension plan than non-union workers.3 Critics do not mask the connection between eradicating unions and eliminating pensions, as a participant at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference opined, “If we just stop and cure the pension problem, we have not gone far enough.”4 In doing so, they use the economic downturn as an opportunity to diminish the expectations of workers and permanently limit the value of pensions, even when prosperity returns.

Click this link for the full report: PENSION

A Summary Analysis of HHS’ 244-Page Exchange Rule Proposal

The Department of Health and Human Services released a 244-page proposed rule for the establishment of exchanges and the qualification of health plans to participate in these exchanges. The regulations can be found here. Below are some highlights of the major issues covered.

Click this link for the full report: PLANS

Coniberal? Progractionary?

by Richard Brodsky

I used to be able to recognize lefties by smell, touch or sound. They cared about progressive taxation, economic justice for the poor, a decent level of government services and the environment and had a healthy suspicion of big business.

Some leading Dems are tossing most of that stuff overboard. They are embracing Republican economic policies, while still clutching hard to Democratic ideals on identity politics.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the most outspoken exponent of this new kind of politics. He’s creating a new kind of beast: the “Progractionary”…the “Congressive”…the “Coniberal”…the “Libactionary.” It’s a high-risk, high-reward kind of politics, and the outcomes are unknown.

Cuomo’s state budget and his rhetoric were from the hard-right playbook, the one with chapters titled “Read My Lips, No New Taxes,” “The Problem Is Spending and Unions” and “Cut School Aid and Health Care.”

By telling us New York has to cut spending and can’t afford any more taxes, Cuomo paid a hefty price from traditional Democratic constituencies. He’s looking hard at a national future, which requires left-wing credentials. What to do?

His answer is shrewd and insightful—maybe. He has adopted the economic policies of the Right, but is aggressively supporting the liberation and identity struggles of the Left. He is carefully courting the leaders of New York’s many religious, ethnic and language minorities, and has made enactment of a gay marriage bill a top priority.

Cuomo exercised considerable muscle to get it done, with Democrats falling in line and Republicans preparing to trade enough votes for other things they want. He’s betting that a true human rights victory, and an important one, will allow him to reclaim the liberal mantle his father fashioned and wore for so long, no matter what his economic policies are.

Maybe being progressive means something different now. Conservatives never liked the New Deal or the Great Society, never liked Social Security or Medicare or progressive taxation, always favored unleashing the economic and political power of large corporations and hated government programs that softened the hard edge of wealth and income inequality.

Democrats, on the other hand, stuck with those principles as inarguable and fundamental declarations of their social vision, until now. The erosion of Democratic solidarity in this fight will have huge consequences.

Identity politics rose from the civil rights movements, the women’s movement and a growing awareness of historical repression and injustice against once-stigmatized groups of Americans. Ensuring decent treatment of all Americans is central to any society’s long-term health and decency, but it lacks the broad unifying appeal of economic issues.

The Right never supported the civil rights or women’s movements, or most of the others. Those causes became linked to Democrats almost as powerfully as economic justice. Now identity politics may have trumped economic concerns among Democrats. It’s a little scary, but Cuomo has launched that boat.

In an era when corporations dominate economics and politics, the collapse of support for economic fairness will have enormous consequences for most Americans.

These policies built the American middle class, made upward mobility possible, made old age bearable and created a politically active and involved citizenry that encouraged democratic values.
The new beast slouching out of Albany onto the national stage is an unfamiliar creature, and a dangerous one. It’s not that labels matter, but labels matter—and smushing together right-wing economics and left-wing identity politics deserves a new name.
Progractionary? Congressive? Coniberal? Libactionary? You choose. But it could change America for the worse no matter what you call it.

Richard Brodsky is a Senior Fellow at Demos, a NYC-based think tank, and at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Administration. He served in the state Assembly from 1983 to 2010 and chaired the corporations and environmental protection committees. He appears regularly as a contributing editor on WRNN-TV.