By Marcia Gelbart
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — The cooperative spirit that characterized municipal labor talks a year ago has given way to an escalating war of words that is creating the most charged atmosphere between the administration and the city’s four employee unions since Mayor Nutter took office.
With current one-year contracts set to expire June 30, both sides publicly stress a degree of respect for one another. But even now, months before talks are to begin in earnest, disagreements are spilling over into rallies, news conferences, and inflammatory rhetoric, leaving some to wonder if a strike by any or all of the unions is in the city’s future this summer.
“Last year, we were giving him the benefit of the doubt that he could come in and give us his ‘new way and new day,’ and now we doubt his benefits,” Brian McBride, of Local 22 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said of Nutter last week.
At issue are the city’s financial stability and the salaries and health and pension benefits of its 22,000 unionized workers.
The more rancorous tone appears in part to be driven by the nation’s shattered economy and its impact on the city budget — and, in the firefighters’ case, Nutter’s decision last fall to close five engine companies and two ladder companies.
Nutter, who said in an interview that the atmosphere “is not charged on my side,” summed up the different environment by pointing to the city’s budget shortfall: “We have about $2 billion less than we had when we were meeting last year.”
Coupled with the city’s two-decade-plus history of cutting services and searching for creative ways to generate new dollars, “that makes the solutions both less obvious and more complex,” said Mark Aronchick, a city solicitor under Mayor Bill Green.
“I think both sides are trying to deal with new and recently changed economic circumstances and the frustration of trying to explain to each other how they see things.”
Draining tax dollars
In public discussions about his 2010 budget, which Nutter is to unveil March 19, the mayor frequently highlights that employee pension and health-care costs consume 21 percent of the city’s $4 billion annual budget and are growing rapidly.
“If you look at what goes on in the private sector and in other public-sector jobs,” he said recently, “our employees pay much less for the overall cost of health care than many other citizens who are paying the tab.” The pension system, he said, “is slowly draining the tax dollars away from services that the citizens want and deserve.”
Former city Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said, “The pressure is mounting on the Nutter administration to go after pension and health-care benefits. At some point in time, he has got to do some heavy lifting, and if that happens, I think there’s going to be a strike.”
Publicly at least, tensions have been highest between the administration and the firefighters, who object vehemently to the fire-company closings. (State law prohibits firefighters and police from striking.)
Nutter last month accused the firefighters’ union of engaging in “scare tactics” with regard to a radio ad it sponsored that included a dramatization of a woman calling 911 to report a fire, only to learn the nearest ladder company had been closed.
Nutter wondered aloud whether the union was trying to “create more public hysteria” with labor talks coming up.
McBride said at the time that “it’s only a matter of time before we lose a life.”
Criticizing the mayor
A few days later, he stormed out of a public briefing on the budget — walking inches behind Nutter, seated at a table as he conducted the meeting — after the mayor failed to mention the fire-company closings while leading a review of last fall’s spending cuts.
“I don’t dislike the guy at all,” McBride said. “It’s just I feel he hasn’t lived up to the promise that he made during the campaign. I think he’s using the recession as a way to cut the city workforce size and to negotiate contracts.”
There is more visible animosity as well between the mayor and white-collar District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, City and Municipal Employees, whose 3,400 members include city engineers, accountants, and social workers.
At one recent union news conference, president Cathy Scott criticized the mayor for focusing mainly on service cuts and tax and fee increases to balance the budget. She called on Nutter to establish a job for a “revenue czar” to collect money owed to the city. “Our government has lost its focus,” she said. “Make those who can and should pay, pay.”
Nutter later mocked the idea to reporters. “We have a serious budget problem and need to deal with it with serious ideas,” he said. “We don’t live in fantasyland.”
In an interview, Nutter said: “I believe you can represent your position and even have a difference of opinion about ideas without being disagreeable and personal about it. . . . These will be tough times, and it is certainly my hope that we are still able to conduct our negotiations in a fair and honest and firm fashion.”
Much as he did last year, the mayor is holding strong to his refusal to discuss labor negotiations in the press. Yet during recent public meetings, aides have singled out contract provisions that they say inhibit their ability to reduce spending.
Maintaining relationships
At a “PhillyStat” meeting on the 2010 budget that Nutter chaired last month, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey pointed out that the police-union contract guarantees officers vacation between May and October. Since those months are also peak crime periods, he said, the smaller pool of working officers drives up police overtime.
In contract proposals given to the police and fire unions in January, Nutter is seeking drastic concessions, such as no pay raises and involuntary furloughs of up to 30 days a year. John J. McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, at the time called the offer “insulting,” and McBride decried the administration’s “scorched-earth tactics.”
Last week, McNesby said, “I don’t really worry about the proposal that he put forth. It is what it is.”
In many ways, the mayor’s relationship is more nuanced with the police union than with the other unions, largely because of the recent spate of police-officer deaths. “He has been there for the cops when we needed him. He has been at every funeral,” McNesby said. “We are going to do our contracts and go about it the best possible way.”
The city’s largest union, AFSCME District Council 33, has maintained a seemingly nonadversarial relationship, at least publicly, with the administration.
Union president Herman “Pete” Matthews recounted recently that he worked with Nutter to find city jobs for more than 100 workers whose positions were eliminated last fall. He also pointed to his union’s agreement to a Nutter-backed plan regarding city pension payments that could save $172 million over five years. (The other unions also supported the plan.)
“I have a working relationship” with the mayor, said Matthews, whose union represents 9,400 city workers, including trash collectors and correctional officers. “We know what position the city is in, and we are trying to overcome these things before it becomes something drastic. I don’t want to fight — unless I have to.”
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