Cathy Scott, President of AFSCME District
Council 47 in response to Nutter Budget address.
The
City of Philadelphia has a longstanding agreement whereby
its employee have accepted less in wages in exchange
of the guarantee of health and pension benefits.
To break
that covenant without a meaningful and earnest attempt
at revenue enhancements is shortsighted, self
defeating and wrong. The deal is the deal.
City employees, who have given up much in the past,
should not be the target of the budget balancing proposals
by the Mayor or by the Council.
Last year, members of DC 47 agreed to the Mayor’s
proposal to a one-year contract that did not include
wage, pension or health increases for City employees.
We agreed to “joint committees” to address
health care costs. We voted with the Mayor for Pension
Plan changes. We proposed multiple avenues to increase
revenues through the collection of monies owed the City
outright or through payments for City provided services.
We have played a positive role in helping the City meet
our goals.
To date, the Mayor has ignored those proposals.
To date, the Mayor has provided no City contract proposals
for a new contract.
Nor has the Mayor addressed what will be done with national
stimulus funds that will come to the City. Nor, has the
Mayor aggressively pursued the collection of what the
City is owed by tax deadbeats or those who can afford
to pay more.
The budget discussion has remained essentially the same
for the past few months. The discussion is still centered
on cuts – it’s just moved from all service
cuts to selective and regressive actions that focus on
the poor and city employees and ignores getting those
who can afford to pay to more to pay more. That is a
disappointment and it is another signal that the City
has lost its focus.
It is wrong to demand that City employees take a pay
cut by proposing no employee raises for five years while
demanding that employees pay more for benefits the City
agreed to the bargain to offset wage increases at the
same time employee’s taxes are being increased.
Balancing the budget of a city of 1.5 million on the
backs of its 27,000 employees is neither right nor moral.
|
