The Streets Were Paved with Gold (54 page)
Read The Streets Were Paved with Gold Online
Authors: Ken Auletta
The city also agreed to “give in” and:
Increase holiday and night differential pay, which is tied to base pay.
Detectives, for instance, will receive several hundred dollars more each year—totaling about $1,200 annually.
Agree to binding arbitration to determine whether the city would continue to owe its workers the one-year wage deferrals of 1975
, totaling between $180 and $200 million. (In July 1978, the arbitrators ruled in the workers’ favor, declaring the city owed this money to its employees.)
Include COLA I payments in the wage rate in the second year.
Agree to raise COLA I payments from an average of $395 to $441.
Some employees whose contracts expired at different times, namely, teachers, would receive their $441 in the second year.
Continue to pay increments for teachers, Board of Higher Education professors and uniformed employees.
Most uniformed employees receive increments for just the first three years on the job. After the first year, for instance, cops, firemen and corrections officers receive pay increments of $2,443, in addition to their regular wage hike and cost-of-living adjustments. In year two, they receive $675 more; in year three, an additional $671. Sanitation men get about 10 percent less. Teachers receive about $1,000 annually in pay increments over their first eight years. All increments also become part of the base pay, being counted for future wage hikes, overtime and pensions.
Agree to grant pensions to all part-timers who work for the Board of Education.
These 10,000 paraprofessionals were now to be paid on an annual rather than hourly basis.
Restore the three increments (about $1,650) teachers did not receive in 1977 and 1978 because of the “fiscal crisis.”
Cede to the teachers’ union the right to grant larger than 8 percent raises to those with seniority, and smaller raises to junior teachers.
This deed was done when the Koch administration agreed that once they decided how big the pie would be—$757 million of city funds for raises over the two years of the contract—the unions, not the city government, could decide how to slice their share. Faced with an internal union challenge, UFT President Shanker, with the approval of the Board of Education, decided to gift larger slices of the pie to more numerous senior teachers. In fiscal 1979, the increments for seventh-year teachers were increased by $250 (to
$1,250) and eighth-year teachers were given $1,180 extra (a total of $2,180); in fiscal 1980, seventh-year teachers will receive an additional $250 and those in their eighth year an extra $1,250 (or $2,250 in increments). Also, over the two years of the contract, teachers with ten to fifteen years on the job will receive an additional $500 bonus, bringing their longevity pay to $2,000. Those with more than fifteen years’ service will receive an extra $1,000 over the two years. Instead of a flat 8 percent raise, Shanker chose to increase increments and longevity pay by an amount greater than 8 percent. However, those teachers with five years or less of service will not share in these raises. Over the two years they will receive their COLA I payments ($777), their cost-of-living bonus ($1,500), their four increments ($2,000) and their three back increments ($1,650). It’s not peanuts, but it’s less than most teachers will get. “It was a brilliant move by Shanker,” observed Michael Rosenbaum, a city negotiator who used to work for D.C. 37. “All of the younger teachers were laid off. Few have been hired. Only about 10 percent of the teachers will not benefit, I would guess.” He guessed about right. Shanker’s union approved the pact by a vote of 44,858 to 4,485.
Thus, in “grocery money,” over the two years of the contract many teachers could receive 40 percent above their base salary. Assuming an $18,000 base salary, watch:
Depending on what you count, the two-year pay increase ranged from 6.7 percent to about 40 percent. When you count just “grocery money,” the cost of the two-year settlement can be seen as rivaling the 39 percent three-year contract won earlier that year by the coal miners. When you confront city and union officials with these higher percentages, they complain that it’s unfair to count as “new money” benefits that have previously been received (as we have seen, this is not what union leaders say to their members). There is merit to this argument, but those who make it usually try
to have it both ways. On the one hand, they argue that workers went three years without a raise; on the other, they claim post-1978 raises should not be counted because they are similar to the raises received over the previous three years.
“Measured by the normal standards of labor-management relations,” pronounced labor attorney Theodore Kheel, “the settlement is quite reasonable.” But these were not “normal” times. Measured against Koch’s pledge for “a no-cost labor contract,” the settlement was extravagant. Measured against the city’s proclaimed four-year budget deficit of over $1 billion, and the knowledge that New York was asking federal taxpayers to take some risk to help finance this deficit through loan-guarantees, the settlement seems less modest. Measured against the management changes the city sought and lost, the contract represented business-as-usual. Once again, the city was deciding to divert whatever cash “surpluses” or budget savings it achieved not to reduce the overall deficit, not to cut taxes to make the city more competitive economically, not to improve services or rebuild crumbling streets and bridges, but to grant wage increases. “We gave them all the money we have, no question about that,” Koch softly conceded.
