New York City Mayor: Union rights are not wrongs

Commentary

In Ohio, Wisconsin and other states facing budget deficits, some elected officials assert that closing those gaps requires achieving labor savings and weakening labor unions.

They are half right.

Across the country, taxpayers are providing pensions, benefits and job security protections for public workers that almost no one in the private sector enjoys.

Taxpayers simply cannot afford to continue paying these rising costs.

Yes, public-sector workers need a secure retirement. And yes, taxpayers need top-quality police officers, teachers and firefighters. It's the job of government to balance those competing needs.

But for a variety of reasons, the scale has been increasingly tipping away from taxpayers.

But unions also play a vital role in protecting against abuses in the workplace, and in my experience they are integral to training, deploying and managing a professional workforce.

We should no more try to take away the right to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to a secret ballot.

Instead, we should work to modernize government's relationship with unions -- and union leaders should cooperate, because the only way to protect the long-term integrity of employee benefits is to ensure the public's long-term ability to fund them.

The problem is not unions expressing their rights; it is governments failing to adapt to the times and act in a fiscally responsible manner.

If contract terms or labor laws from years past no longer make sense, we should renegotiate -- or legislate -- changes.

In New York City, we, too, are seeking to legislate changes to reduce pension and benefit costs and modernize our labor laws. But in some cases, we believe expanding collective bargaining would be more beneficial than trying to eliminate it.

For example, in New York, state government -- not the city -- sets pension benefits for city workers, but city taxpayers get stuck with the bill.

The mayor cannot directly discuss pension benefits as part of contract negotiations with unions, even though pension benefits could be as much 80 percent of an employee's overall compensation.

In addition, the state Legislature passes pension "sweeteners" for municipal unions that help attract support for their re-election campaigns.

These are problems that mayors around the country also face. Our proposal to the state is simple: Legislate lower costs this year and, going forward, give us the authority to negotiate fair pension savings ourselves.

In New York City, we are preparing to lay off workers across city agencies, including 4,500 teachers. And the only thing worse than laying off teachers would be laying off the wrong teachers -- some of our very best.

That's why we are asking the state to give us the legal authority to collectively bargain a layoff policy with the teachers' union -- and in the meantime, to conduct layoffs based on common-sense factors like eliminating teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory or found guilty of criminal charges, or who have failed to meet professional certification requirements.

To the extent that collective bargaining agreements or state laws are no longer serving the public, we should change them.

The job of labor leaders is to get the best deal for their members. The job of elected officials is to get the best deal for all citizens.

Rather than declaring war on unions, we should demand a new deal with them -- one that reflects today's economic realities, not those of a century ago.