THE 22,000 MUNICIPAL WORKER LAYOFFS ARE STILL BEING THREATENED; LABOR NEEDS A STRONG, UNITED RESPONSE

The 22,000 layoffs for city workers are still on the table for October 1 (see below). Note that the NYPD is not subject to layoffs but the DOE is. NYPD can cut in other areas. Am I to understand that there is no way to cut the DOE besides laying off educators? That makes zero sense. How again is the city going to afford in-person schooling? In my opinion, the Mayor is afraid to take on the cops. 

To figure out a proper union response, I took out my copy of Joshua Freeman's Working Class New York so that I could reread the chapter on the 1975 fiscal crisis. In the seventies, the financial elite corporatists destroyed the social democracy experiment New York City attempted after World War II. The unions reacted separately. The UFT had what was their only strike that produced no real gains in 1975 while Taylor Law penalties were imposed so teachers lost two days pay for every day on strike and tenure was taken for a year. The UFT never went on strike again and has had to pay dearly for every dollar we've gotten since then with deteriorating working conditions because we have so little leverage.

In 2020, I am scared of the coronavirus but I am not afraid of layoffs if organized labor unites. The political climate is quite different today compared to 1975. At that time, there was a huge backlash against NYC's highly evolved social democratic welfare state. The city was used as an example by the elites to show how NYC was too generous in providing decent healthcare and free college education for all. By 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President. In the age of Trump, the working classes aren't unified but there is plenty of anger out there. Many still try to play divide and conquer on race. Today, teacher union militancy is on the upswing all over the country. If unions work together, we can stave off austerity again. It didn't happen in 1975 but it was proposed.

A general strike was proposed at the height of the fiscal crisis in 1975. Then UFT leader Albert Shanker's response tells you everything you need to know about the UFT even then. It's on page 267 of Freeman's book: "A general strike is a political weapon associated with the communist unions of Europe. For us to use it would be irresponsible." Irresponsible to whom? The city that the UFT and other unions lent our pension money to in order to bail them out or his members and the members of other unions? If every union was on strike, we could have made some gains for loaning the city our pension funds. It's nothing new for the UFT to be looking out for the city more than us. 

I would add that there has not been a public sector strike in NYS that I know of since the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, ruled in 2011 that the Taylor Law ban on strikes is a human rights violation. If we threaten a strike, it doesn't end until the penalties from the Taylor Law are waived or the left-leaning New York State Legislature votes to repeal the ban on strikes.  

This is a big part of the article where de Blasio threatens jobs. It is from Politico:

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is moving forward with “painfully real” plans to lay off 22,000 public workers on Oct. 1 unless another source of cash comes through.

De Blasio confirmed the layoff plans are progressing after POLITICO first reported Tuesday that agencies have been ordered to come up with a list of employees being considered for job cuts by the end of next week.“

The overwhelming cost of local government is personnel. Where we put our money is into the people who provide services to New Yorkers, whether they’re first responders, health care workers, sanitation workers, educators, you name it,” de Blasio told reporters Wednesday

“If you’re going to keep cutting and keep cutting, it has to at some point reach personnel. It’s just pure logic of budgets, and it’s very sad logic. I don’t like it one bit, and I want to avert this at all costs. So that 22,000 number is painfully real," he said.

De Blasio has been hoping for a multi-billion dollar federal aid package to bail out the city after the coronavirus pandemic decimated its bottom line. But he acknowledged Wednesday that “appears to be dead now.”

The mayor has also asked state legislators for authority to borrow money to pay expenses, but Albany lawmakers have so far balked.

And the city is in talks with municipal labor unions on other cuts that could save $1 billion in labor costs, a number required by the city budget passed at the end of June.

If none of those three options comes through, de Blasio said layoffs will happen — on a scale not seen since the 1970s fiscal crisis.

“It’s a massive, painful number. It resembles the kind of things we had to do decades ago. But the job here is to try and avert it if we can,” he said.

De Blasio’s budget team has reached out to high-ranking officials within city departments to instruct them on how much of their individual budgets must be slashed through shrinking the workforce, according to several people involved in the calls.

They said the NYPD — whose nearly $6 billion budget was the source of tremendous controversy amid anti-police-brutality protests in recent months — is being given different orders and will not be asked to do layoffs, though they will have to cut in other areas.