By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Powerful guys making six-figure salaries are
in a titanic contest in Albany, and the pawns they risk are as many
as 8,700 unionized workers including laborers, clerks and group
home counselors making less than $30,000 a year.
It's Albany's inevitable clash. Powerful public worker unions
that rose to great influence in New York state government through
political contributions and huge memberships against politicians
who fed that growth but now are forced to slash years of
overspending in a historic fiscal crisis.
It's a conflict neither Gov. David Paterson nor union leaders
can afford to lose.
Paterson, making $179,900 a year, is following through with his
months-old threat to enact rare state layoffs - up to 8,700 of them
- in the state's unionized work force by July. He said he is left
with no choice after union bosses refused to agree to relatively
modest contract concessions including foregoing 3-percent raises
this year.
As for Paterson, he gave up 10 percent of his salary and
eliminated the 3-percent raises to his management team. In
exchange, he promised no layoffs for managers in a decision that
also saved enough to bring down the number of potential
rank-and-file layoffs by 200.
Last week, The Associated Press revealed Paterson had floated an
offer to the unions that would allow for half the raises this year
and next while crediting the full 3-percent and 4-percent raises
for pension purposes and guaranteeing no layoffs for two years.
Union bosses, including CSEA President Danny Donohue who makes a
base pay of $168,604, and PEF President Ken Brynien, who makes a
base pay of $137,622, responded with scathing press conferences.
They called the governor's bluff, with Donohue even questioning
whether Paterson was on bad drugs or needed a psychiatrist.
"It's not about substance," CSEA spokesman Stephen Madarasz
said in an interview. "We can't open the contract. If we open one
contract, what's to stop every other employer to say, 'We want to
reopen the contract?' You set a precedent. You can never again do
good-faith bargaining."
He wouldn't say if rank-and-file members knew of this week's
offer, calling it moot because the membership staunchly supporters
its leaders and is galvanized against Paterson.
"If all he has to say is we have to give him something back, we
have nothing to talk about," Madarasz said. "They simply, for
political purposes, want to inflict pain on the union."
He's got a point. A hard-fought contract benefit compromised is
often a benefit lost forever. And tough talk is usually good
politics for governors.
It worked well for Paterson last summer and fall as he warned
about the growing fiscal crisis and the need to cut spending, even
though few listened.
"This crisis is as undeniable as it is dangerous," Paterson
said in a July 31 speech to the National Press Club. "States are
going to have to practice the fiscal discipline and make the
difficult decisions that we've eschewed for decade after decade,"
the Democrat said. "The time for action is now."
Back then, he got cheers.
Today, as he's been trying to turn rhetoric into action as well
as because of his own notable political missteps, Paterson is
tanking in the polls. Helping to push Paterson down were repeated
TV, radio and print ads by public employee unions opposing his
funding cuts that affect members' jobs. All painted Paterson as
uncaring and bumbling, the latest and most successful media blitz
by public worker unions that have vexed governors for 30 years.
Last week's Quinnipiac University poll found 65 percent of New
Yorkers felt Paterson and the Legislature ultimately lacked the
political courage to make those tough decisions in the massive
state budget. That 2009-10 budget, adopted late on April 3,
included an 8.7 percent increase in spending after many of
Paterson's cuts were rolled back in agreements with lawmakers.
As for Paterson, Quinnipiac found voters, by a 60 percent to 28
percent margin, disapproved of the job he is doing, the lowest ever
for a New York governor. Sixty-three percent said he doesn't
deserve to be elected in 2010.
In this latest fiscal fight, neither Paterson nor the union
leaders are budging, as thousands of union families statewide
nervously wait.
Paterson, a baseball fan since he was a kid, sees a lesson in
the famous double-play combination of Tinkers to Evers to Chance
that helped the Chicago Cubs win the 1908 World Series even though
the stars were no longer speaking to each other over a disagreement
about cab fare.
"That is something that Americans should understand," Paterson
says, "We don't always have to like each other. We don't always
have to agree with each other. We don't even always have to speak
to each other. But if we work together, we can find some ways out
of the economy's woes and into prosperity in a lot sooner period
than we might have thought."
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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