DON’T FORGIVE TWU’S FRIENDS
The New York Post
Published: 12/22/2005
City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Rep. Anthony Weiner are both likely to run for mayor four years from now. When they do, don’t forget the positions they took in the run up to the transit strike.
When you’re trudging through the cold to wait on a two-block-long line for a crowded dollar van or a taxi that can’t get through Midtown, remember that Thompson and Weiner support the Transport Workers Union.
And when the city cuts library services, park resources or police strength in your neighborhood to help pay for ballooning pensions and health-care plans for city employees who’ve demanded benefits like those of the TWU, remember that Thompson and Weiner supported the Transport Workers Union.
A week ago, the TWU staged a hostile and heated rally outside Grand Central Terminal, featuring such moderate speakers as Al Sharpton. At the rally, Thompson spoke in solidarity with the union. And Weiner spoke in particularly strenuous terms, telling the union that “New Yorkers are with you. Your fight is their fight!”
Weiner and Thompson both now claim that they never supported a strike. Oh, no. They were just supporting a fair and balanced settlement.
These two politicians were courting two large constituencies – organized labor generally, and municipal unions specifically – whose interests are inimical to those of most voters. Weiner and Thompson were just hoping you would not notice.
The TWU is one of New York’s more militant unions – the fact it’s on strike in clear violation of the law makes that obvious. And any politician seeking the Democrat nomination for mayor wants whatever union support he can get. The more militant the union, the better: It gives him more credibility as truly pro-labor when he courts other unions.
It’s just politics as usual – and part of the reason Republicans keep winning the mayoralty.
The TWU’s politics and negotiating position are contrary to New Yorkers’ interests. But winning the Democratic nomination isn’t about being for all New Yorkers. It’s about cobbling together enough special interests so that, on primary day, you can get 40 percent of the vote from a small, left-of-center electorate.
Far more important than politics as usual, though, is the message to all city workers. When Weiner says the TWU fights for “every New Yorker,” he’s really saying they fight for every member of a municipal union that provides well-above-market pension and health benefits.
Those above-the-private-sector benefits are a big part of the multibillion-dollar budget deficits the city faces over the next few years. (Of course, it’s hard to remember that we face those deficits when none of the candidates spoke about them during the mayoral campaign.) The city is on a collision course with the rising costs of these benefits, and that issue will have to be faced soon.
The TWU, on the other hand, has incredibly generous pension and retirement benefits, even when compared with municipal unions’ benefits. If the TWU has to face this issue and “give back” anything, all unions fear they might have to accept reasonable changes, too.
Weiner now claims he never supported a strike, but he does seem to support the generous benefits. I asked him if if any benefits should be reduced; he replied: “These people are the middle class. I don’t believe you solve the problems of health care by taking middle-class people and whacking them.” He did not explain how setting normal commercial benefits would qualify as “whacking.”
Look at it as an early volley in the 2009 Democratic primary for mayor. Weiner and Thompson are trying to signal to all municipal unions that, though pension costs are out of control and out of whack with reality, they’ll oppose efforts to decrease them as mayor. It may not solve deficit problems; it may cause city tax hikes or service cuts. But if that’s what it takes to get elected, who cares?
This way, you get the votes – and subway riders get to walk to work during the strike. And, if Weiner or Thompson becomes mayor, then you can foot the bill, too.