DC 37's Deal

A Second Look from Outside

By BRANDON L. WARD

District Council 37 last month obtained a 9.42-percent wage increase without making any concessions. This alone is the benchmark for a successful contact. Indeed, one might be tempted to think that the whole zeitgeist of labor negations has changed for municipal unions. However, before Lillian Roberts, the executive director of DC 37, is allowed to take a bow, the union's 121,000 members must take a second look at this agreement. After all, the ability to see things wholly and clearly at first glance is something that most of us don't possess.

Think about it. When you watch a movie, do you catch everything the first time? Probably not. When you see a movie a second or even a third time, you realize that there were things you missed the first time around - the foreshadowing, some of the dialogue, or a glimpse of the scenery. Especially if it was a good movie, that makes the experience even more pleasing the second time around. Thus, I cannot resist the temptation to take a second look at the meaning of the hortatory message of DC 37's Public Employee Press: "Contract Victory." It can't hurt, right?

First off, the juxtaposing of this agreement's "No Givebacks" against the 1.5- percent health-cost concessions made by Transport Workers' Union (TWU) Local 100 underscores what I have stated in my June article; that is, nothing in politics is rewarded more than loyalty and obedience. After all, even Stevie Wonder could have seen the Mayor's HPD housing initiative - an HPD program that provides DC 37 members preference for 5 percent of the units in city-sponsored lotteries for affordable homes and apartments - unveiled a year ago to DC 37 members was a precursor to the union's endorsement of his 2005 mayoral re-election campaign.

Go Along, Get Along

Even so, it is increasingly clear to this observer that Mayor Bloomberg's skill sets seem best suited to handling negotiations with "business unions" (by this I mean unions whose M.O. seems to primarily focus on negotiating wages and benefits) rather than "political unions" - unions that, in addition to negotiating the economic interest of their members, also engage in political and social activism for workers' rights. Nothing illustrates this more than the mayor's response to the haggling that went on between the TWU and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority during the transit strike in December 2005. Unable to avert the strike, our Mayor engaged in vulgar criticism by referring to the TWU's leadership as "thuggish."

Indeed, as a successful businessman, one could make the case that Mayor Bloomberg has effectively used a persuasion technique employed by car salesmen called "Perceptual Contrasting." This involves convincing a subject (in this case DC 37's 56 locals and their respective leadership) to view their proposed contract deal in a much more favorable light by contrasting it with other facts: like, say for instance, the TWU's 1.5-percent health-cost concession or the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators' inability to get a raise (or a contract for that matter) for its members.

Interestingly enough, the key factor in the "Perceptual Contrasting" technique is that it is entirely possible to alter a person's perception of the facts, even when those facts have not changed in the slightest.

Not Such a Windfall

For example, without declaring a war with the administration after negotiating a 6- percent increase and some givebacks here and there over three years during the 2004 contract negotiations, DC 37 proclaimed a "contract victory" after gaining a 9.42-percent wage increase (over 32 months and 2 days) and making no concessions. However, let's take a second look and crunch the numbers. Based on an annual salary of $30,000 (the average salary of a DC 37 member), this raise adds up to $2,826 during the contract period. This works out to be a monthly salary increase of about $89. Add to this Mayor Bloomberg sweetening the deal by proposing to ease residency rules which will allow DC 37 members to live in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Orange, Rockland and Putnam counties.

There are two ways one might view this: 1) Either Mayor Koch's plan in 1986 to impose residency requirement for city jobs was brilliant in its intent to cultivate a municipal work force that reflected a growing minority population (like DC 37 members) in the city or 2) Mayor Bloomberg's five-percent preference in HPD housing lotteries for income-eligible DC 37 members was ill-conceived. So much so that a suburban housing plan (i.e. easing of residence rules) to address the affordable housing crisis in the city is now required. At first glance, the Mayor's suburban plan brings to my mind a New York Times Magazine article of Nov. 27, 2005 that asked: "Were the French riots (of November, 2005) produced by modern architecture?" In other words, the poorer citizens live outside the city (the suburbs) while the more affluent citizens live in the city, Paris. Intentionally or unintentionally, this suburban plan, in effect, sent the message to the poor suburban residents that they were out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

Who Can Afford It?

Clearly, by any cost-of-living measure, a $103 monthly pay increase is not cutting it in the five boroughs or, for that matter, the aforementioned six suburban counties. According to a recent New York Times headline, "Taxes Outstrip Income Growth in the Suburbs," in Nassau County the tax collections rose 29 percent from 2000 to 2004, and by 26 percent in Westchester County. To be fair, while the average home in these counties is more affordable than a condo in Manhattan, as a matter of economics, the average DC 37 member can't afford to take on the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on a $200,000 home with a $103 monthly pay increase. (With principal and interest the monthly payment would be $1,467. Add insurance and taxes, and payment would be well over $1,800 per month). Of course, one cannot ignore the decreasing purchasing power of the dollar at the gas pump or even with a TransitChek on the LIRR or Metro North.

Economically speaking, I get the sense that some employees might wake up to find out that their migration to these six counties was not so profitable after all. Certainly, that's the sense I got reading (in this paper) about the kicking and screaming of racism that went down last year by some employees of the state's Department of Labor following the move by decision-makers in Albany to close a Call Center in the city and scatter the workers to offices upstate.

Here's the bottom line. What we have here is what some folks in certain circles call a fix. On one hand, the Koch administration implemented the residency law to keep city jobs for city residents; on the other hand, Mayor Bloomberg is changing it to make it more affordable for DC 37 members who are being priced out of the city to live outside the city; contractually, of course. Somehow and implicitly we are encouraged to believe that the wage and benefit package of this contract deal has caught up to inflation, at least outside of the city.

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.