I was thrilled with the news that the city's labor unions refused to give in to Mayor4Life Bloomberg's blackmail by rejecting a deal to tap into a health care fund to the tune of 360 million dollars to avert layoffs. When the news first came out, I was hoping that Michael Mulgrew was one of the driving forces behind the refusal. In fact, he's trying to revive the deal.
Mulgrew still doesn't get it. This mess is of the mayor's making, and he is looking for a way out. Why should the city's unions fund the mayor's escape hatch? By even entertaining the idea of funding our way out of layoffs, we are buying into the mayor's lie that the city doesn't have the money. But the city does have the money--there is a 3.2 billion dollar surplus. How can we ask for a new contract with the pay increases we are due when we are tacitly admitting that the city is broke? It makes no sense. So besides bailing His Moneyness out, we would be guaranteeing 3 more years of no raises and annual layoff threats. This is the deal that Mulgrew is so anxious to make?
Here's the deal we should make: We'll give him the money in exchange for a 2.5 year no layoff guarantee and the 4% annual raises we should have gotten in the first place. That way, we won't ever have to deal with the midget mayor again, unless he decides to buy himself a fourth term.
And knowing the mayor's penchant for ignoring deals he has made, such as the promise that TDRs would remain private, we need this deal to be iron clad. Knowing Bloomberg, he'd create a new "crisis" next year that would necessitate scrapping the agreement. To prevent this, any agreement should stipulate that emergency layoffs could only occur if all city contracts with outside vendors, such as the 900 million being spent this year, are cancelled first.
That's a deal I'd make.
2 comments:
Sounds good to me. Also, he'll never be elected for a 4th term so we have one more full school year of his baloney and then we're done.
Bloomberg does not want his legacy to end and wants his policies to continue in perpetuity even when he's out of office. I heard that he's planning to prep, polish and buy the next mayor of NYC. So let's prepare ourselves for a big battle with the billionaire badboy. Only with his death will we finally have peace
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