Gwyneth Shaw Photo
The email that stuck in Cherlyn Poindexter’s craw — that would remain in her craw a month later amid a city budget crisis — invited people to a “good-by” party.
The invitation went around city offices on Feb. 3. It invited people to a “‘good-by good luck’ reception” for staffers leaving their appointed jobs in the mayor’s office.
One of those staffers, mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga, was indeed leaving New Haven — by her own volition. She found a job in the D.C. area, where her family was moving. Her job wasn’t being eliminated; someone else would replace her.
Two other “departees” weren’t going to be unemployed, either. They were moving positions with the New Haven Promise scholarship program.
Poindexter (pictured above) heads New Haven government’s 396-member management and professional union, AFSCME Local 3144. Like other city unions, 3144 has had members laid off in recent months, without, Poindexter said, having other jobs to slide into; their positions were eliminated. The DeStefano administration eliminated 96 positions on Feb. 17; the $475 million proposed new fiscal year budget could eliminate up to another 190 positions in the schools and would turn the jobs of 176 custodians over to a lower-paying private contractor.
Like 11 of the city’s 13 unions, Poindexter’s local is currently in turbulent contract negotiations with City Hall. (The teachers and school administrators unions have reached new agreements.) And like other unions, Local 3144 faces more layoffs in coming years if it doesn’t agree to health and pension givebacks, according to Mayor John DeStefano.
“My people got no party on the second floor [of City Hall] saying ‘good-bye, hello’ at the same time,” Poindexter said. “Everybody should be sharing the sacrifice. No one was laid off from the mayor’s staff.”
(The mayor’s office did cut two of 11 positions this year, responded mayoral spokesman Adam Joseph. One was deputy chief of the staff; the other was deputy “media associate.”)
Actually, the Feb. 3 message was just one of many emails that stuck in Poindexter’s craw. Such emails seem to come her way daily: announcing new positions being filled that she considers less necessary to the public good than those eliminated elsewhere, like a spokesman for the schools department; or, most recently, a special assistant to the health director, a position she felt one of her laid-off members could have moved into. And yet, she complains, the public keeps getting the message that city unions are the problem at the root of the city’s budget crisis, the obstacle to balancing the books without raising taxes.
Poindexter’s not alone is feeling maligned. Fellow leaders of city AFSCME unions joined her Monday in appealing to the public to see their combined 1,500 or so members as struggling scapegoats offering concessions in tough times, not as overpaid naysayers. The union leaders sought to broadcast that message in an audience with the Independent and La Voz Hispana at our joint offices on Elm Street.
“This is anti-Willie Sutton stuff. They’re going after the lowest-paid workers,” said AFSCME Council 4 Executive Director Sal Luciano.
Murphy (left) and Dorman.
“How does laying off people help?” asked AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman. “They’re trying to make the people who didn’t create the problem bear the brunt of everything.”
On one level, the multi-pronged negotiations with the 11 city unions involve the numerical differences over pay scales or pensions and health care as June 30 contract expirations loom. One contract, for the custodians, is already in arbitration; both sides expect others to end up there, too.
On another level, the conflict involves differing view of the roots and magnitude of the city’s fiscal crisis, and competing charges of bad faith.
DeStefano, who for most of his 17 years in office has enjoyed smooth relations with labor, has repeatedly charged that union leaders won’t own up to the fact that the city can’t afford anymore to pay pension and health benefits far higher than those in the private sector. With a long-term annual structural deficit of over $50 million, he says, he can’t tax New Haveners any higher, so he must shrink government and cut benefits instead.
All levels of government must share in the needed sacrifice to make that change, he repeated in an interview on Tuesday; the city even laid off cops (16 of them) for the first time in decades.
Union leaders responded that instead of bargaining in good faith, the mayor has sought to balance the budget by laying off or seeking to cut benefits for the lowest-paid workers while protecting his appointees in higher management; and that he’s scapegoating union leaders rather than negotiating fairly and taking their constructive proposals seriously.
Double Standard?
In Monday’s group interview, in between fielding repeated questions about how they’d go about balancing the budget, the union leaders listed what they called repeated slights and hypocrisy on the part of City Hall.
They spoke about how the unions gave up longevity bonuses but, after promising to, executive staffers didn’t this year. City administrators explained that that happened because an administrative error in how to make that change happen this year; it will happen next year, they said. (Read about that here.)
The union leaders noted that Mayor DeStefano voluntarily gave up his longevity bonus anyway. The other execs should have, too, if the city’s budget crisis is as dire as they say, the leaders argued.
Custodians union President Robert Montuori spoke of how schools Chief Operations Officer Will Clark kept that bonus for himself while arguing that the city can’t afford to continue paying union rates for custodians.
“He’s testifying in binding arbitration that they don’t have the wherewithal to pay. When you’re making $146,000 a year, you’re still going to take a longevity raise? On $146,000 a year? You can’t have it both ways,” AFSCME lead negotiator Kevin Murphy added.
Paul Bass Photo
Montuori (at right) with Hobson (left) and Poindexter.
Montuori also complained about Clark in particular attacking the custodians’ union for rigid rules like one preventing managers from shifting workers around schools when a job is completed. Clark was the school official who agreed to putting that rule in the custodians’ contract in the first place, Montuori said.
Joseph referred questions about Will Clark to Clark, who didn’t return a call seeking comment. The school system’s paid spokesman said Clark would not return the call. Instead, the spokesman issued a statement with quotations attributed to Clark.
$19-$33K Pensions
Other union leaders at Monday’s interview spoke of the true cost to taxpayers of workers’ pensions. Public attention has focused on cops retiring with pensions as high as $124,000 a year. The average dispatcher in Ronald Hobson’s Local 884, on the other hand, who retired over the past five years did so with a $19,936 pension, Hobson said. In Poindexter’s union, the average is $33,805, she said.
More importantly, only 60 percent of their members get pensions—and forgo Social Security benefits as a result. Others are paid out of “special funds” (like grants), so they don’t get pensions at all.
The city has two pension plans: The City Employee Retirement Fund (CERF) and the Police and Fire Retirement Fund (P&F). Together, the plans cover 2,000 active employees and 2,200 retirees. (Teachers and school administrators are covered by state-run pension plans to which the city does not contribute.)
Both funds took a nosedive in the economic downturn: CERF lost $49 million in the two years since June 30, 2008; P&F lost $36 million. As of June 30, there was $243 million in CERF and $148 million in P&F. The drop in value leaves both plans drastically underfunded: CERF is 47 percent funded, and P&F is 52 percent funded. The police and fire funds could run out of money during this decade without major changes, according to the mayor.
As for health benefits, leaders criticized the push to have their members pay higher deductibles and co-pays. Local 3429 President Tonya Gonsalves said some of the paraprofessionals in her union, who assist teachers, earn as little as $8,000 for a 10-month working year. Some of them end up filling in for months at a time when a classroom teacher leaves. They can’t afford to start paying $50 a month co-pays to see a doctor (up from $10 now) or $1,500 annual deductibles, she said. She called the proposals a “slap in the face.”
Mayoral spokesman Joseph pointed to the administration’s proposal for Local 3144 as an example of a universal health policy the city’s seeking. Co-pays for 90-day supplies of prescription drugs now range from $5 to $35, he said; they would go up to a range of $10 to $40. He called that a reasonable rise. He also spoke of building in incentives to save the city money: For instance, the city proposes keeping at $10 the co-pay for 90-day supplies by mail order.
The union leaders also spoke of concessions they’ve already made: Custodians haven’t had raises for years, for instance. Poindexter claimed taxpayers saved $750,000 this past fiscal year because the managers in her union went without raises.
So where would labor find the money to balance the city budget without raising taxes?
The presidents ticked off some proposals they’ve already made, such as switching to a lower-cost prescription plan and increasing workers’ pension contributions from 6 to 9 percent. The mayor has responded that those proposals don’t go far in addressing the city’s budget gaps.
Poindexter said she’s been pushing a hiring freeze. The city and the Board of Ed hired 600 new people from January through October 2010, she said; it shouldn’t have. It should have stopped building new schools; she had proposed putting three schools on hold last year.
“We did put some schools on hold,” Joseph responded.
Sal Luciano.
Luciano said the city shouldn’t have 13 separate health insurance plans for the 13 unions, each paying 10 percent administrative costs. He said pooling those plans into one can save money in lower premiums and administrative fees.
“Generally the unions [historically] requested the different plans [because)] not every plan works for every employee,” Joseph responded. At the unions’ suggestion, the city administration has been exploring joining the state workers’ health plan.
And the city can lop off top management ranks, they argued: They disagreed with the need to fill four assistant police chief positions, for instance. Or to have two sets of lawyers at arbitration talks. Or to pay $90,000 for a supervisor of police dispatchers.
“The workforce reductions touched upon nearly segment of city government,” said mayoral spokesman Joseph. “Every city department budget saw a reduction [in budget] with the exception of the Board of Ed and the Board of Aldermen. Taxpayers have stepped up to the plate: They had tax increases three of the last four years. They’re going to pay more taxes at the state level. Now we’re asking the bargaining units to step up to the plate as well.”
The union leaders were asked if their proposals, taken together, would meet the $50 million or more the mayor has said he needs to cut in the long-term annual cost of running the city.
They responded that they don’t know what the real numbers are, because the city administration doesn’t reveal them. Instead, they argued, the city makes proclamations to the media.
“My phone number must be Channel 8’s number,” Poindexter said. “They seem to know more about what’s going on than I do.”