Regular Session Falls Short on Labor Agenda

One of the favorite sayings of President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Immanuel is “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.   Unfortunately, in terms of passing labor oriented bills to help working families in New York State, we have done just that in the 2009 regular legislative session. The shortcomings of this year are not just of note for union members, but all working men and women who rely on government to keep the playing field level between the extremely powerful corporate interests and ordinary, working people. The failure to enact an unemployment insurance increase and indexation is the primary example of this, but the list is almost too large to cover in one newsletter.

The Governor has still not put forth an alternative to the NYS AFL-CIO unemployment insurance increase proposal, despite promises to do so, and the Legislature has also not passed a decent unemployment benefit increase.   This colossal failure is keeping federal funding out of the hands of working men and women and flies in the face of everything that the Obama Administration has attempted to do to address unemployment and stimulate the economy at the grass roots.

The failure to rein in Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs) and create real wage standards for businesses and not-for-profits that get IDA funding is another example.  IDAs hand away $600 million annually in tax breaks to business and this does not include the bonding and construction assistance that IDAs give away at taxpayer expense.  Yet IDAs continue to operate with no wage requirements, driving down the wage base and the end result is government subsidized poverty wage jobs.

The Governor continues to rail against high property taxes.  Yet his proposals to deal with the problem are to attack the pensions of public employees, cut education and health care aid, and further erode important labor programs like competitive bidding and prevailing wage laws.  Yet there is no similar attempt to take on businesses that accept IDA funds but do not pay their own property taxes and rarely meet their job creation targets.  

The attack on the pensions of working men and women is yet another example.  In fact the nearly fanatical quest for a new Tier 5 ended up being the very reason it did not pass.  Even with the willingness of most unions to discuss this issue, it takes fair, methodical negotiations where the needs of all unions are addressed to enact any meaningful changes.
 
Finally, the failure to address our structural, long term revenue problem in this year’s budget will mean more pain in next year’s budget.  Again, failure to enact a coherent plan will lead to more draconian cuts in construction, education, health care, transportation, worker protection programs and many other issues that working families rely on.

As always, the NYS AFL-CIO stands ready to work with the Governor and Legislature to address the problems that working New Yorkers face as we assess this year and move forward. We hope that the Governor and Legislature will assess some too.

Denis M. Hughes