Bloomberg and the Unions

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Mayor Bloomberg is being applauded for turning down the demand from 1199 Service Employees International Union to put 25,000 home health care workers on the city payroll at a cost of up to $1 billion in exchange for the union’s political endorsement. “For his courage in defense of the budget, he deserves praise,” the director of New York Civic, Henry Stern, wrote in our pages on Tuesday. “Bravo to Mayor Mike,” said the editorialists at the New York Post, which broke the story on Monday. And rightfully so. The mayor recognized that his personal political interest in receiving the union’s endorsement is at odds with the taxpayers’ interest in keeping the city’s spending down.


Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic opponent, Fernando Ferrer, disgraced himself. He accepted the 1199 SEIU endorsement Tuesday after refusing to rule out the idea of putting the home care workers on the city payroll. Were Mr. Ferrer to make such an expensive move and pay for it with an increase in money extracted from city taxpayers, it’d be typical of his tax-and-spend pattern. The former president of the Bronx has already promised at least $1 billion in new education spending and $1 billion in new “affordable housing” spending, paid for with tax increases.


While we generally are leery of criminalizing political disputes, this whole area looks ripe to us for review by the prosecutors. It’s probably beyond Eliot Spitzer, though he dusted off the Martin Act to harass productive New York capitalists. But under New York State law a person is guilty of bribery in the third degree – a felony – “when he confers, or offers or agrees to confer, any benefit upon a public servant upon an agreement or understanding that such public servant’s vote, opinion, judgment, action, decision or exercise of discretion as a public servant will thereby be influenced.”


It’d be nice for some prosecutor to launch an investigation into whether the president of 1199 SEIU, Dennis Rivera, in fact offered an endorsement in exchange for a mayoral action, and whether that endorsement – with the union political effort that goes with it – constitutes a “benefit” for the purpose of the statute. One reason Mr. Spitzer is unlikely to act is that, although he’s a law enforcement officer, he has already endorsed Mr. Ferrer and even appeared on stage with him at his primary night victory party.


* * *


The matter of mayoral candidates and the unions doesn’t end there. It happens that Mr. Bloomberg, who has received the endorsement of the New York building trades council, appeared with its leader this week and sent a letter to President Bush opposing Mr. Bush’s decision, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to suspend of the Davis-Bacon Act. Given that Mr. Bloomberg, whose news service is staffed by non-union journalists, has little history of fighting with Mr. Bush over a prevailing-wage law that even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once suspended, it’s hard not to wonder whether there’s a connection between the construction unions’ backing of Mr. Bloomberg and the mayor’s defense of a law that was originally designed to discriminate against black and immigrant workers.


Which leaves Mr. Bloomberg one and one with respect to the unions. He made the right move in refusing to use taxpayer money to purchase Mr. Rivera’s endorsement. But he made the wrong move in opposing the president on Davis Bacon to please the building trades.


The tie-breaker will be how Mr. Bloomberg deals with the United Federation of Teachers. The teachers voted in a closed-door meeting this week to try to reach a contract with the city by early October and if that fails to “consider the union’s options including … a mayoral endorsement.” Mr. Bloomberg must know that if he pays for such a political endorsement – or even political neutrality – by committing taxpayer dollars to a contract deal, he’ll be committing the same error that he and a lot of other people found so repugnant when it was broached by 1199 SEIU.


Using tax dollars to buy an endorsement is no less wrong merely because the person with the endorsement for sale is the UFT’s Randi Weingarten instead of 1199 SEIU’s Dennis Rivera. The mayor has been strong so far in insisting that any contract with the teachers meet the pattern set in negotiations with the city’s other unions, with any further pay raises paid for by productivity increases. One reason Mr. Bloomberg was elected was his independence from special interest pressure groups. If the mayor refuses to truckle to the teachers, he’ll deserve the same applause he got for turning down the deal with 1199 SEIU.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use