Sleeping with the Enemy: Why New York's Unions Backed the Most Antilabor
Mayor in History
by Bob Fitch
With only a few days left in the race, in a city with over 500 union
locals, the Democratic nominee, Ruth Messinger, who's walked more picket
lines than all but the most veteran labor leaders, has won the endorsement
of exactly 10 locals. When her labor supporters turned out at City Hall
Park last Friday, the numbers were more appropriate to a bas mitzvah than a
mass rally. Only about 150 showed up. Messinger's locals tend to be quite
small, like the Lithographers
Local 1L, or nearly defunct, like the Structural Steel and Bridge Painters
union with only 500 members. Or have nothing left to lose, like Jim
Butler's Local 420 hospital workers. Essentially, Messinger has no union
support, no cash, no phone banks, no street heat.
It's all gone to Rudolph Giuliani, perhaps the most antiunion mayor in New
York's history, who has secured 58 endorsements. He's picked up cash, and
coerced volunteers from the city's biggest union--Stanley Hill's
120,000-member District Council 37; he's won the support of the largest
private-sector union organization--the Building and Trades Construction
Council; and perhaps most stunningly, last week the Central Labor
Council--the AFL-CIO's umbrella organization in the city with 1.5 million
members--voted for the first time in postwar history to support a
Republican mayor.
Not even Dennis Rivera, head of the 110,000-member 1199 hospital workers
union, who also serves as vice-chair of the state Democratic Party, is
supporting Messinger. He's officially neutral. But as one union observer
put it, ''He's neutral, like the Swiss banks were neutral during World War
II.''
None of the reasons handed out for organized labor's massive defection to a
fiscally conservative law-and-order Republican add up. Rudy's overwhelming
popularity? He may have a 61 per cent approval rating in the NY 1--Observer
poll. But they're only asking likely voters. Among eligible voters, polled
by The New York Times, Giuliani's under 50 per cent. And while the city's
labor leaders are going for Giuliani five-to-one, does anyone think their
members will vote that way?
Besides, DC 37's Hill isn't supporting Giuliani because of the polls.
According to filings at the Campaign Finance Board, DC 37's PAC first began
cramming cash into Rudy's coffers in February 1995, about the same time as
the construction unions. So why is the union backing the mayor?
There's the excuse that Messinger's run a lousy campaign. ''When the
history of this campaign is written up it will serve as a model of what not
to do,'' says one insider at the Central Labor Council. ''Her campaign has
been a series of attacks on her own core constituency--labor and the Upper
West Side.'' But the timing of labor's support for the mayor knocks out
this explanation too.
What about taking at face value what labor leaders say when they appear by
his side at City Hall and dutifully announce their support? ''Rudy's
'open.''' ''He listens.'' He's ''been a fair mayor.'' The real reason is
that they're terrified of him.
They have reason to be. Oppose Giuliani and you could lose your job as
union boss. Remember what happened to Tony Bernardo? Bernardo was the
president of the EMS union, which opposed its merger with the fire
department. Last year, the city tried him for driving an ambulance without
a license in 1988. The new EMS president Kevin Lightsey says he gets along
well with Rudy.
Then there's CWA 1180 president Arthur Cheliotes, a voluble Giuliani
critic. Since he started opposing Giuliani's cuts, he's lost nearly 40 per
cent of his membership to Giuliani cutbacks and reclassifications. Local
420 president Jim Butler tried in court to block Giuliani's plan to sell
off public hospitals. Now the mayor is contracting out the jobs of his
lunchroom workers to McDonald's.
City unions backing Giuliani are disguising an abusive relationship: 25,000
public-sector job cuts. Between 11,000 and 17,000 were trimmed from DC 37's
membership alone since 1994, depending on whose head count you believe. Add
to that a 27-month pay freeze for all city workers. But an even worse blow
is Giuliani's Work Experience Program (WEP). Nowhere else in urban America
is there a program of such scope and antiunion intensity. The mayor and
Stanley Hill both say city workers are not being replaced with welfare
recipients working just for their welfare checks, with no rights, no pay,
and no benefits. But they are. Look at the Parks Department. The only paid
employees left are supervisors--the rest are WEP workers. Today, the city
has 38,000 WEP workers. The mayor has promised to have 65,000 in WEP by
next year, and 130,000 by the year 2001. How can municipal unionism coexist
with 130,000 WEP workers?
At the Barclay Street headquarters, a DC 37 staffer who'd just come from a
high-level meeting chuckled, ''They're having trouble getting volunteers to
make calls for
