City bargains tough with unions — in public forum - The New York WorldThe New York World

City bargains tough with unions — in public forum

Posted April 18, 2013 By Nathaniel Herz & Curtis Skinner

Deputy Mayor Caswell Holloway strode into a conference room on Wednesday morning for a speech hosted by the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission.

Clad in a crisply pressed suit, Holloway threw out a proposition to the government- spending watchdogs in the audience: His boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would negotiate long-awaited pay hikes for any municipal union that agreed to two conditions.

First, no retroactive raises for labor groups working under expired contracts that date back to the last recession. And second, the unions would have to agree to chip in payments for health care costs, which are currently borne overwhelmingly by the city.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway, right, made the administration’s case Wednesday for tough bargaining with civil service unions. Photo: Spencer T. Tucker

Judging from the response, the proposal has about as much of a chance of going forward as Bloomberg does being elected to a fourth term.

“It can’t be serious!” said Lillian Roberts, executive director of District Council 37, the city’s largest public employees union. “Hell no! He needs to sit down and talk to the MLC in a responsible manner.”

The MLC is the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group that historically has negotiated labor contracts. Labor leaders immediately rejected Holloway’s proposition, adding that if the Bloomberg administration really wanted reforms, it would be negotiating with them in private.

Instead, the proposal’s public release serves as another reminder of the yawning gap between the mayor and the unions, and the challenge of reining in the city’s rising health care costs — currently pegged at $6.3 billion in next year’s budget, and rising to $8.3 billion in 2018.

“The city is right: It can’t keep watching health care spending go up, and this is really something that the city and labor force should agree on,” said Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute.

But relations between the two parties are so bad, she added, that there’s little hope of any progress before the inauguration of a new mayor in January — a source of frustration to budget watchdogs.

“Bloomberg, who was supposed to be fiscally conservative, really hasn’t solved any of the city’s long term fiscal problems,” Gelinas said. “They’re a huge employer and can be leading the way on how to cut health care costs, and they haven’t been doing it.”

A mayoral spokeswoman defended the release of the plan by citing Bloomberg’s past calls for union contributions to health care costs.

“The Mayor has discussed healthcare reform with the unions for years,” the spokeswoman, Lauren Passalacqua, said in an email.

Holloway’s speech on Wednesday, though, came with a new twist. He said that the city should reorganize its health insurance plans to reward workers who participate in initiatives like wellness programs and smoking cessation — and punish those who don’t, by making them pay extra.

The ideas are styled after those promoted by the new federal health insurance law, and are aimed at reducing the overall cost of care. Holloway said that the mayor’s office’s initial calculations showed that the changes could save the city more than $400 million annually.

The reforms would entail a bidding process to find a new company to administer the plan, and on Monday, Holloway sent a letter to Harry Nespoli, the head of the Municipal Labor Committee, requesting a meeting to discuss issuing a request for proposals.

Nespoli didn’t respond to a request for comment, but he told Capital that there was little chance of striking a deal with Bloomberg.

“He’s got 277 more days left in this administration,” Nespoli said. “Something like that takes a little more time to sit down and to go over some of the points and some of the new ideas before you turn around and look to replace the carriers you have now.”

The union criticism notwithstanding, Holloway’s pitch still garnered praise by budget watchdogs. Carol Kellermann, the CBC’s president, praised the reforms as a “win-win.”

“It would be good for employees, and it would be good for the city,” she said.

But labor experts seemed baffled by the timing and the public presentation, which struck longtime union consultant and lobbyist Vinny Montalbano as counterproductive.

“You do not negotiate in the press, and they know that,” he said. “If they want a solution, this is not the way to do it. So the only explanation one can come to is, they don’t want to come to a solution—they want publicity.”

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<h1>City bargains tough with unions — in public forum</h1>Deputy Mayor Caswell Holloway strode into a conference room on Wednesday morning for a speech hosted by the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission.
Clad in a crisply pressed suit, Holloway threw out a proposition to the government- spending watchdogs in the audience: His boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would negotiate long-awaited pay hikes for any municipal union that agreed to two conditions.
First, no retroactive raises for labor groups working under expired contracts that date back to the last recession. And second, the unions would have to agree to chip in payments for health care costs, which are currently borne overwhelmingly by the city.
<div id="attachment_10703" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-10703" class="size-medium wp-image-10703" title="holloway" src="http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/wp-content/uploads/holloway-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/holloway-300x169.jpg 300w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/holloway-352x198.jpg 352w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/holloway-500x281.jpg 500w, thenewyorkworld.org/wp-content/uploads/holloway.jpg 568w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway, right, made the administration’s case Wednesday for tough bargaining with civil service unions. Photo: Spencer T. Tucker</div>
Judging from the response, the proposal has about as much of a chance of going forward as Bloomberg does being elected to a fourth term.
“It can’t be serious!” said Lillian Roberts, executive director of District Council 37, the city’s largest public employees union. “Hell no! He needs to sit down and talk to the MLC in a responsible manner.”
The MLC is the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group that historically has negotiated labor contracts. Labor leaders immediately rejected Holloway’s proposition, adding that if the Bloomberg administration really wanted reforms, it would be negotiating with them in private.
Instead, the proposal’s public release serves as another reminder of the yawning gap between the mayor and the unions, and the challenge of reining in the city’s rising health care costs — currently pegged at $6.3 billion in next year’s budget, and rising to $8.3 billion in 2018.
“The city is right: It can’t keep watching health care spending go up, and this is really something that the city and labor force should agree on,” said Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute.
But relations between the two parties are so bad, she added, that there’s little hope of any progress before the inauguration of a new mayor in January — a source of frustration to budget watchdogs.
“Bloomberg, who was supposed to be fiscally conservative, really hasn’t solved any of the city’s long term fiscal problems,” Gelinas said. “They’re a huge employer and can be leading the way on how to cut health care costs, and they haven’t been doing it.”
A mayoral spokeswoman defended the release of the plan by citing Bloomberg’s <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-administration-eyes-health-care-hike-city-employees-unions-resistance-article-1.968483');" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-administration-eyes-health-care-hike-city-employees-unions-resistance-article-1.968483" target="_blank">past calls</a> for union contributions to health care costs.
“The Mayor has discussed healthcare reform with the unions for years,” the spokeswoman, Lauren Passalacqua, said in an email.
Holloway’s speech on Wednesday, though, came with a new twist. He said that the city should reorganize its health insurance plans to reward workers who participate in initiatives like wellness programs and smoking cessation — and punish those who don’t, by making them pay extra.
The ideas are styled after those promoted by the new federal health insurance law, and are aimed at reducing the overall cost of care. Holloway said that the mayor’s office’s initial calculations showed that the changes could save the city more than $400 million annually.
The reforms would entail a bidding process to find a new company to administer the plan, and on Monday, Holloway sent a letter to Harry Nespoli, the head of the Municipal Labor Committee, requesting a meeting to discuss issuing a request for proposals.
Nespoli didn’t respond to a request for comment, but he told Capital that there was little chance of striking a deal with Bloomberg.
“He’s got 277 more days left in this administration,” Nespoli said. “Something like that takes a little more time to sit down and to go over some of the points and some of the new ideas before you turn around and look to replace the carriers you have now.”
The union criticism notwithstanding, Holloway’s pitch still garnered praise by budget watchdogs. Carol Kellermann, the CBC’s president, praised the reforms as a “win-win.”
“It would be good for employees, and it would be good for the city,” she said.
But labor experts seemed baffled by the timing and the public presentation, which struck longtime union consultant and lobbyist Vinny Montalbano as counterproductive.
“You do not negotiate in the press, and they know that,” he said. “If they want a solution, this is not the way to do it. So the only explanation one can come to is, they don’t want to come to a solution—they want publicity.”

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