BALCONY Issues in the News

St. Vincent’s RNs to protest acquisition by Beth Israel & Continuum Health Nurses will protest outside the hospital on Thursday, Jan. 28 at 11 a.m.

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2010 – The 800 registered nurses who work at St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in Greenwich Village fervently oppose the proposed takeover of the 727-bed facility by Beth Israel Medical Center and its parent Corporation, Continuum Health Partners. Within 60 to 90 days of the takeover, all acute care, surgical units, and emergency services would be shut down.

Hundreds of nurses from the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) will protest this action outside the facility on Thursday, Jan. 28, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The hospital is located at West 12 St. between 6th and 7th Avenues.

“Where would we be if the St. Vincent’s emergency room had not been not there for 9/11 and the airplane landing on the Hudson River?” said Eileen Dunn, a registered nurse at St. Vincent’s and president of the NYSNA bargaining unit there. “St. Vincent’s has served the community for 160 years, and can continue to serve the community through a reasonable restructuring plan. Shutting the doors is not the answer.”

The hospital is $700 million in debt and has been struggling financially for years. Under the proposal, St. Vincent’s regional trauma center would be severely scaled back. St. Vincent’s is also designated for AIDS treatment and psychiatric care.

“This proposed takeover by Beth Israel will devastate the community by closing the only acute-care facility on the Lower West Side of Manhattan,” said John Hiltunen, a registered nurse at St. Vincent’s and member of the NYSNA Board of Directors.

“St. Vincent’s is integral to the very fabric of the neighborhood and the city,” said Lorraine Seidel, MA, RN, director of NYSNA’s Economic and General Welfare program. “It is one of the cornerstones of Greenwich Village. It would be tragic to succumb to a plan which disregards the healthcare needs of this community. NYSNA nurses will do all we can to keep St. Vincent’s open.”

The New York State Nurses Association is the voice for nursing in the Empire State. With more than 37,000 members, it is the state’s largest union and professional association for registered nurses. It supports nurses and nursing practice through education, research, legislative advocacy, and collective bargaining.

Nurses Association contact: Randi Hoffman 212-785-0157, ext. 118, cell 646-707-7359.

Don’t Close St. Vincent’s Emergency Room and Trauma Center

NEWS FROM
Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard N. Gottfried
822 Legislative Office Building, Albany, NY 12248 – Tel: 518-455-4941
250 Broadway, #2232, New York, NY 10007 – Tel: 212-312-1492 GottfrR@assembly.state.ny.us

Statement by NYS Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard N. Gottfried

“After 9/11, St. Vincent’s was the primary admitting hospital for the injured survivors,” said Assembly Health Committee chair Richard N. Gottfried. “Closing the St. Vincent’s Emergency Room and Level 1 Trauma Center would be devastating to the local community, and in the event of a catastrophe, would endanger the City. In the aftermath of September 11, the emergency room was expanded to be able to respond to everyday emergencies as well as large-scale disasters and mass-casualty events. We must do everything possible to protect St. Vincent’s, and especially its ER and TraumaCenter.”

Most U.S. Union Members Are Working for the Government, New Data Shows

by Steven Greeenhouse

For the first time in American history, a majority of union members are government workers rather than private-sector employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday.

In its annual report on union membership, the bureau undercut the longstanding notion that union members are overwhelmingly blue-collar factory workers. It found that membership fell so fast in the private sector in 2009 that the 7.9 million unionized public-sector workers easily outnumbered those in the private sector, where labor’s ranks shrank to 7.4 million, from 8.2 million in 2008.

“There has been steady growth among union members in the public sector, but I’m a little bit shocked to see that the lines have actually crossed,” said Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor at the United States Chamber of Commerce.

According to the labor bureau, 7.2 percent of private-sector workers were union members last year, down from 7.6 percent the previous year. That, labor historians said, was the lowest percentage of private-sector workers in unions since 1900.

Among government workers, union membership grew to 37.4 percent last year, from 36.8 percent in 2008.

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, voiced dismay that government employees now represented a majority of union members.

“It’s a very bad sign,” he said. “We’ve been banged around some, but when you see what’s been happening to the industrial base of this country, to the steelworkers, to the autoworkers, they’re been hammered much more.”

After rising the two previous years, overall union membership fell by 771,000 in 2009, to 15.3 million, largely because employment declined over all. But the rate of private-sector unionization fell because two sectors where unions are especially strong — manufacturing and construction — suffered especially large job losses. Construction lost more than 900,000 jobs last year, falling to 5.9 million, while 1.3 million factory jobs were lost, declining to 11.6 million.

The overall unionization rate edged lower, to 12.3 percent last year from 12.4 percent in 2008.

Damon A. Silvers, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s policy director, said the decline in private-sector unionization “tells us that good jobs are disappearing faster than bad jobs.”

According to the labor bureau, median weekly earnings for full-time unionized workers were $908 last year, compared with $710 for workers not represented by unions. The bureau attributed this difference not just to unionization but also to variations by occupation, industry and company size.

Notwithstanding the recession, government employment grew last year, inching up 16,000, to 22,516,000, according to the bureau.

Fred Siegel, a visiting professor of history at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, said, “There were enormous political ramifications” to the fact that public-sector workers are now the majority in organized labor.

“At the same time the country is being squeezed, public-sector unions are a rising political force in the Democratic Party,” he said. “They depend on extra money for the public sector, and that puts the Democrats in a difficult position. In four big states — New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California — the public-sector unions have largely been untouched by the economic downturn. In those states, you have an impeding clash between the public-sector unions and the public at large.”

Several labor officials and scholars said private-sector workers could regain their majority in a year or two because of potential large-scale layoffs of government workers in the face of the budget squeeze faced by so many cities and states.

Assessing the drop in private-sector unionization, Paula B. Voos, a labor relations professor at Rutgers, said, “It’s a sad commentary on the ability of private-sector workers to unionize.”

“Unions have less strength when they represent a lower percentage of workers,” she said. “Nonetheless, unions have strength in those sectors of the economy where they are organized. Workers who are in the entertainment industry, workers who are on the docks of the Port of New York and New Jersey still have the strength of their labor organizations.”

Noting that union members generally have higher earnings, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a statement: “As workers across the country have seen their real and nominal wages decline as a result of the recession, these numbers show a need for Congress to pass legislation to level the playing field to enable more American workers to access the benefits of union membership. This report makes clear why the administration supports the Employee Free Choice Act,” a bill that would make it easier to unionize.”

But J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts, a corporate-backed group opposing that legislation, had a different response to the report.

“Labor union membership is an outdated concept for most working Americans,” he said. “It is a relic of Depression-era labor-management relations.”

Voting 45-1, Council Rejects $310 Million Plan for Mall at Bronx Armory

by Sam Dolnick

Bronx advocates said that the City Council vote on Monday to reject a $310 million project to build a mall inside the Kingsbridge Armory provided an opportunity to come up with a more community-oriented plan for the massive red-brick castle.

City Council members who voted down the project 45 to 1, with one abstention, said that the plan, proposed by the Related Companies, would have created hundreds of jobs that would have paid at or around the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, pay that they called too low to support local families.

They wanted Related to pledge that every job at the mall would pay at least $10 an hour, arguing that the company was set to receive more than $50 million in tax credits and exemptions. Many cities across the country have similar requirements for projects built using public money.

But Related said that any requirement to pay above minimum wage would make it impossible to attract tenants or secure financing.

The two sides negotiated through Sunday night, but with neither willing to bend, the Council voted to kill project, quashing plans that the developer said would have created 1,000 construction jobs and about 1,200 permanent ones.

The Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance, a coalition of labor, religious and community leaders, said it would seek to work with a developer that would turn the building into a community resource that offers space for recreation, cultural and educational activities.

“We want development that will improve the community but not at the expense of pushing poor people out,” said Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter, a longtime Bronx advocate.

The vote was a surprising defeat for the Bloomberg administration, which championed the project as a valuable investment that would spur much-needed economic development in the city’s poorest borough.

But to many in the Bronx, the Kingsbridge Armory project and the prospect of so many low-wage jobs crystallized what opponents regarded as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s disregard for working-class families. The fight for a “living wage” became a populist battle against “profits for barons,” in the words of Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr., and an opportunity to hold developers that use public funds accountable.

“I am against any irresponsible project that would bring negative impacts to the community,” said Councilwoman Annabel Palma, the leader of the Bronx delegation. She cited traffic problems and parking concerns, along with the low wages, as the project’s biggest problems.

Mr. Bloomberg called the vote “disappointing and irrational.” In a statement, he said, “As a result of today’s vote, we can say one thing for sure: There will be no wages paid at all at the Kingsbridge Armory for the foreseeable future.”

Related, which has built projects across the city, including several in the Bronx, blamed the collapse of the plan on “outside groups imposing artificial wage demands that do not exist anywhere else in New York City or New York State.”

The armory, a federal, state and city landmark on Kingsbridge Road at Jerome Avenue, was built by the city between 1912 and 1917 and was used to store arms and ammunition and to train troops. Since then, it has been used as a shelter for homeless women and a concert space, among many other incarnations, but it has sat vacant for more than a decade.

On Monday, council members played down the importance of the wage issue and maintained that land-use problems were the main reason for the outcome of the vote, part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. But for months, the wage dispute has drowned out other concerns.

Advocates praised the Council’s vote, and members of the alliance gathered Monday at City Hall with signs saying, “Bloomberg to Bronx: Drop dead.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s office said he would veto the Council’s decision. But the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said she had the two-thirds majority vote needed to override him.

The armory vote, originally scheduled for last week, was postponed to allow for further negotiation. One potential compromise was a city fund to pay retail employees at the armory extra wages on top of what employers paid, or to provide them with MetroCards and other benefits. The fund would have been financed partly with the $5 million that Related offered to pay for the building. That idea collapsed when the city lawyers said aspects of it would run afoul of the State Constitution, Councilman Joel Rivera said.

The Council’s demand for higher paying wages was not unprecedented. Nearly 200 cities already require developers using public money to pay more than the minimum wage, according to Peter Dreier, a politics and urban policy professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles who has studied wage issues.

At the Kingsbridge Barber Shop, across the street from the hulking armory, barbers and customers alike said the community did not need a mall, or more low-wage work.

“People need jobs, but they don’t need chump change,” Jose Nuñez said as he cut a customer’s hair on a recent afternoon. “This building belongs to the people in this area.”

From the barber’s chair, Courtney Brooks agreed. “We’re not suckers in the Bronx,” he said. “We’re not going to take whatever somebody is offering.”

Paterson Trims Aid to Schools and Localities

by Kareem Fahim

Gov. David A. Paterson announced on Sunday that he would unilaterally withhold $750 million in scheduled payments to schools and local governments, saying that strong action was necessary to protect New York State from insolvency.

The reductions of 10 to 19 percent in aid will affect schools and social service providers, health insurance payments, cities and counties. Mr. Paterson said the withheld funds were not “a cut” or an “impoundment” — perhaps drawing a legal distinction because only the Legislature is empowered to make permanent budget cuts.

Some lawmakers called the move illegal, but the governor said “we are well within the bounds of legal authority.”

The governor did not indicate when he would restore the funds, except to say, “as sufficient revenues become available.”

The reductions mean that New York City will not get approximately $84 million in municipal aid and school payments scheduled for Tuesday; an additional $107 million will be withheld across the state. Later this month, $560 million more in scheduled payments will be withheld.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the city was still studying the governor’s proposal. The mayor has said he would probably not object to a plan for spending cuts, as long as they did not disproportionately affect the city.

In announcing the withholding, Mr. Paterson made good on a threat he issued late last month to act on his own if the Legislature did not make enough cuts to address a $3.2 billion state budget deficit. The governor acknowledged that the move was only a “temporary fix.” He said it was needed because of Albany’s legislators’ inaction.

“The reason that we don’t have a permanent fix is because the Legislature walked away and ran back to their districts and told their constituents, ‘Look, I saved the school district from the big bad governor,’ ” he said. “But the reality is that they only temporarily delayed the day of reckoning.”

Mr. Paterson’s cuts to school funds were a direct challenge to state lawmakers, who have regarded such state aid as sacrosanct. After the governor’s announcement, school districts sought to determine the move’s impact.

It was also uncertain when the state’s fiscal health would improve enough so that the withheld money could be restored; the state’s revenue picture is expected to brighten somewhat next month, after bonuses are paid to Wall Street executives and as tax revenue starts to trickle in.

Mr. Paterson is scheduled to present his executive budget next month, and he may propose that some of the withheld payments be cut permanently.

Austin Shafran, the spokesman for the Democratic majority in the Senate, called Mr. Paterson’s actions “self-indulgent theatrics,” and said that New Yorkers “want their leaders to work together to get things done.”

“The first thing that should be done is to work with the Legislature to mitigate any potential cash-flow problem,” Mr. Shafran said. “Taking away money from schoolchildren should not be under consideration.”

Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat, said of Mr. Paterson, “He doesn’t have the legal authority to impound; he may have the legal authority to delay.” Mr. Brodsky said that Mr. Paterson was trying to create the “political environment” for permanent budget cuts.

“If he’ s trying to force a broad recognition that we’ve run out of money, fine,” Mr. Brodsky said. But he warned that “there will be human consequences.”

Other lawmakers, including State Senator Carl Kruger of Brooklyn, a Democrat, pointed out that a 1980 Court of Appeals decision characterized a governor’s attempts to impound money allocated by the Legislature as unconstitutional.

For several weeks this fall, as state revenues continued to drop, lawmakers haggled over how to cut more than $3 billion from the state budget, with Mr. Paterson urging legislators to consider politically unpopular cuts to schools and health care.

The Legislature finally passed a $2.7 billion deficit-reduction plan this month, cutting pensions for many new government workers and overhauling public authorities, but the action was criticized by financial watchdogs who said it did not go far enough and relied too heavily on nonrecurring savings. His aides said that Mr. Paterson cut the state’s largest expenditures remaining in December. In doing so, school districts took the brunt of the pain.

Mr. Paterson’s plan calls for cutting 10 percent of payments due on Tuesday and 19 percent of payments due later in the month.

Elizabeth Lynam, the deputy research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit group that analyzes government spending, called the move “the right course of action.”

“If the funds are not available to make these payments right now, then they should not be made,” she said.

The cuts in school payments drew the strongest resistance. Though Mr. Paterson said that most school districts had reserve funds that would allow them to absorb the reductions, he acknowledged that poorer school districts were “going to be a problem.”

But Stephen Allinger, legislative director of the New York State United Teachers union, said many districts had already used up their reserves for the year. Mr. Paterson’s reductions could affect after-school and sports programs, and result in staff reductions, Mr. Allinger said.

And he asked a question about the cuts that seemed to be on many people’s minds: “What does this mean? Is it just late, or are they going to cut it altogether?”

Mr. Paterson asserted that state law gives him the authority to order his budget director to stop certification of payments in order to preserve the economic stability of the state. Otherwise, Mr. Paterson reasoned, the state would be writing checks it could not back. Yet even as he acknowledged that his legal authority to withhold the payments might be challenged, he said that “this is as far as I can expand the powers of the executive branch within the legal limit.”