Is New Haven Wisconsin?

As the mayor braces for a confrontation with union leaders, he asked them to show the ​“maturity” to distinguish New Haven government’s approach to fiscal crisis from, say, Wisconsin’s. Replied one labor negotiator: There’s no difference.

Those two perspectives emerged as Mayor John DeStefano unveiled a proposed new $475 million budget that includes probably privatizating school custodians — and as he repeated a call for unions to accept pension and health care givebacks in order to avoid sweeping layoffs next year.

Those subjects have provoked recriminations on both sides as the city negotiates new contracts with 11 unions. Democrat DeStefano charges that union leaders have lost sense of economic reality. Union leaders say he’s scapegoating them.

Looming in the background are similar battles occurring in City Halls and statehouses nationwide, as recession-ravaged government coffers and spiraling employee benefit bills have led elected officials to seek dramatic concessions for unionized workforces.

That has left participants in New Haven’s dispute asking: Is New Haven seeing a version of the fight in places in Wisconsin, in which elected officials use the budget crisis as opportunity to cripple unions and eviscerate government services? Or is New Haven seeing a different kind of quest, in which a pro-union government seeks to redefine how government works to meet new budgetary realities while maintaining an ambitious public-service agenda?

Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has sought not just givebacks, but elimination of unions’ right to bargain or collect mandatory dues from members. Thousands of union supporters are camping out in his Capitol in protest while Democratic lawmakers hide out of state to prevent a vote (providing a bonanza, at least, for one pizza company). Ohio’s Republican governor is pushing a similar plan; New Jersey’s Republican governor has happily gone to war with the teachers union.

Meanwhile, even Democratic chief executives elected with union support are pushing for historic concessions.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy this week starts negotiations in which he seeks $2 billion over two years from state unions.

And New Haven’s DeStefano has called for requiring city employees to pay more toward their pensions, agree to higher-deductible health plans, and work longer before they qualify for full pension benefits. Pensions and health care combined have risen from 12 percent to 22 percent of the city’s budget over 10 years, or from $44 million to $105 million, according to the mayor. DeStefano has won nine mayoral elections with the backing of some of the same union leaders with whom he’s now wrestling.

DeStefano’s budget also calls for reducing from $15 million to $8 million the amount of money spent on custodians, most probably by contracting out their jobs. Up to 190 school layoffs loom; the mayor laid off 82 education and other city workers last month.

DeStefano argued that union leaders should recognize that some ​“extreme” Republican elected officials are using the moment to attack labor while others (like him) are trying to keep government afloat and preserve jobs and services.

“Public employee leaders,” he said in an interview, ​“ought to be smart enough to discern the distinction between those who are pursuing a straight-up ideological argument versus [those seeking] what is equitable and affordable to everyone.”

“There’s a difference between Malloy and DeStefano,” shot back AFSCME Council 4’s Kevin Murphy, the lead negotiator for five city unions, after watching DeStefano unveil his proposed budget in City Hall Tuesday. ​“Malloy is talking to us. DeStefano is not. He’s just like [Wisconsin’s] Walker. He’s not taking away collective bargaining because the law won’t let him. … He wants to pick an enemy. The enemy is public sector employees.”

Averages Vs. Medians

The DeStefano administration did come to terms with two important unions, representing school teachers and administrators. Those unions agreed to benefits changes and relaxed work rules (including those governing the firing of poorly performing teachers) in return for raises and job protections. The head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, has been using the New Haven agreement as a model for negotiating similar contracts in other cities.

But city government has 11 other unions representing over 2,000 workers. All their contracts expire June 30. The DeStefano administration is seeking givebacks in all 11 cases; union leaders are balking.

DeStefano predicted that those contracts will end up in arbitration. By the end of the calendar year, he predicted, the city will find out which side will win the argument. If the unions prevail, then they should expect to see massive layoffs in the following fiscal year, he said, because the money’s just not there to pay for their demands.

Without major changes, for instance, the police and fire pension funds will run out of money before the decade is over, he said.

He also argued that city homeowners, already struggling with high property tax rates, won’t support increases to fund what they consider far better benefits than most people receive in the private sector. DeStefano has repeatedly noted that last year, the average cop retired at 49 years old with a $74,000 annual pension (thanks to terms of contracts DeStefano previously struck with union officials).

The 11 union leaders should learn from ​“the way New Haven dealt with immigration and school reform in a mature fashion,” DeStefano said.

“He keeps throwing those big numbers out there. He’s taking it to an extreme,” complained Anthony Zona, treasurer of the police union. Huge payouts to a couple of assistant chiefs skew those numbers, Zona said. Some offers retire with pensions more in the neighborhood of $30,000, he said. Some older retired cops receive closer to $10,000, he said. ​“I want to know what the median is,” not the average.

Zona said the union leadership is open to discussing concessions. ​“How do we know we’re going to binding arbitration?” he asked, questioning DeStefano’s prediction. ​“We haven’t sat down with him yet.” The two sides failed to reach agreement on health and pension issues earlier this month, leading DeStefano to lay off 16 beat cops and 200 union officers to take to the streets in protest. (Click on the play arrow for highlights of that action.)

AFSCME’s Kevin Murphy echoed Zona’s skepticism about the sincerity of DeStefano’s bargaining approach. He too claimed that, unlike the Malloy administration at the state Capitol, the DeStefano administration hasn’t provided full data on costs. He and Zona questioned the city’s math on the state of pension funds.

Murphy also said AFSCME offered to contribute more to workers’ pension plans and change to a less costly prescription drug plan, adding up to $5 million in savings. He charged that DeStefano won’t bargain in good faith, conducting negotiations instead through public statements demonizing unions.

“Maybe, if he wants us to be mature, maybe we can deal with an adult across the table,” Murphy said.

For his part, DeStefano argued that union leaders like Murphy haven’t come to the table with serious positions. Their suggested savings are but a drop in the bucket considering projected budget gaps in the tens of millions in coming years, he said.

AFSCME’s proposal would increase employee contributions to pension plans from 6 or 7 percent to 9 percent. Cops already contribute 9.75 percent — and their fund is still going broke, he said.

He described a recent five-hour session in City Hall in which Murphy and other leaders argued that the city has a ​“revenue problem,” not a ​“spending problem”; and that the root of the problem is the injustice of the top 1 percent of American wage-earners not paying their fair share in taxes.

New Haven can’t rely on more tax increases to solve out of control employee costs, DeStefano responded. And he’d gladly join protests against state and federal income tax policy, he said, but meanwhile he has to figure out how to pay the bills in an impoverished city reliant on the property tax.

Murphy borrowed a term Gov. Malloy uses about his budget — that it sees ​“shared sacrifice.” In addition to seeking $1 billion in labor concessions per year over two years, Malloy is seeking to raise $1.5 billion in new tax revenue, including an income tax hike on top earners.

“There’s no shared sacrifice [in this budget],” Murphy said Tuesday. ​“There’s no increase in property taxes.”

Clean Sweep?

Another sticking point is outsourcing — DeStefano’s desire to have school custodians work for a private company, the way, say, City Hall and police station custodians do. (Click here for a background story.) The administration argues that rigid work rules have led to overstaffing and that custodians have been prone to absenteeism or goofing off on the job.

Private contracts still have to pay workers a minimum of $12.50 an hour on city contracts, but they can pay less in benefits, avoid minimum staffing rules, and limit hours in order to avoid paying benefits.

DeStefano called custodial outsourcing an example of the ways government has to think about doing business differently in a new era.

By cutting school custodial costs almost in half and saving $7 million a year, the city can prevent more cuts to classroom teaching and academics in general, DeStefano said. In these tough times, cities have to make those kinds of tough choices, and he’s choosing student learning over custodial salaries, he said.

“These custodians do more than clean the schools. They take care of the children. You’re not going to get that with a private contractor,” Murphy said. And ​“you can’t live in New Haven on $12.50 an hour” and a 20-hour work week.

He added that the union has ​“no problem” negotiating on work rules.

Murphy pointed to the city’s experience in using a private contractor, Aramark, to run school cafeterias. After complaints about lousy food and overall poor performance, the school board canceled the contract.

Robert Montuori, president of AFSCME Local 387, which represents the custodians, questioned the administration’s custodial math. He said the city keeps arguing that it doesn’t need 220 school custodians to do the work. In fact, the schools have 178 custodians, he claimed; the other positions are unfilled. Meanwhile, the square footage of city schools has doubled thanks to New Haven’s $1.5 billion rebuilding program, meaning custodians are doing twice the work they used to.

It’s unlikely that New Haven will see the kind of sit-ins and government shutdowns currently capturing the nation’s attention in Madison, Wisconsin. But tough negotiating and public debate loom in the months ahead, along with labor-backed challenges in Board of Aldermen primaries. For a taste of what lies ahead, click on the play arrows to watch two confrontations between labor and the mayor, one last October, and one last month.