Mamdani’s Labor Policy Worsens Inequality
Walking my kids to their first day of school brought the unwelcome news that PS 45, on Staten Island, is down to two crossing guards. We used to have (and still need) four. This is a system-wide problem, as the city reports nearly 200 unfilled posts, even after former Mayor Eric Adams cut 500 vacant crossing guard lines as a budget gimmick in 2024.
Crossing guards’ pay starts $18 an hour. One reason why the pay barely exceeds minimum wage is the Office of Labor Relations’ strict policy of pattern bargaining over wages across city agencies, in which the first union to settle a contract with the city — be it teachers, cops or DC37 — sets the pattern for the upper-most across-the-board pay increase that the city will pay any other union.
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Op-Ed: Mamdani Is Right To Side With The Nurses
Mayor John Lindsay famously faced a massive citywide strike of bus and subway workers as his first challenge in office. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 contract expired at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 1966, just as Lindsay was sworn in. The strike was finally settled 11 days later, with union leaders jailed at Lindsay’s insistence for leading an “illegal” work stoppage.
Legendary TWU president Mike Quill suffered an ultimately fatal heart attack in prison, after wishing the judge who did Lindsay’s bidding “drop dead in his black robes.”
This is what some in the press have suggested towards Mayor Mamdani, who has joined with the 15,000 nurses striking against three big hospitals. Continue reading “Op-Ed: Mamdani Is Right To Side With The Nurses”
LaGuardia: the pro-union mayor: Today’s City Hall contenders must follow Fiorello’s labor agenda
In New York’s mayoral election, plenty of candidates claim to be the anti-Trump. But, when it comes to protecting workers’ rights and reducing economic inequality, the better question is who will be the neo-LaGuardia. The “Little Flower” served as the city’s mayor from 1934 to 1945. A Republican, Fiorello LaGuardia was an aggressive advocate for egalitarian and anti-corruption New Deal policies, particularly in support of working New Yorkers at a time when the ambitions of the federal government remained limited.
An example: In 1934, newly elected Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia watched a citywide hotel strike drag on for a second month, and determined to find an amicable settlement for the workers. The industry, represented by the Hotel Association, sparked the strike by firing union activists who refused to join a company union.
The federal government’s untested mediators saw their job as getting the strikers back to work; nothing more, nothing less. The hotel bosses doubted the feds even had that authority, and steadfastly refused to negotiate with their workers’ chosen representatives.
The mayor responded by siccing the city’s health inspectors on the picketed hotels, producing 600 summonses in 48 hours, embarrassing the bosses and humiliating the scabs (who were forced to line up and drop their pants for mandatory hernia exams). The strike ended the following week.
Give Mayor Adams a No Confidence Vote
New York has a fugitive from justice occupying Gracie Mansion, and no clear plan for eviction. The City Council must pass a non-binding resolution declaring Eric Adams unfit to lead and unwelcome to remain as mayor, adding to yesterday’s call for him to resign from Speaker Adrienne Adams. Only then will those who still retain power over him have the ethical high ground and democratic consent to remove him.
Adams was already unfit to lead after he was indicted under federal bribery and campaign finances charges. But with no impeachment provisions in the City Charter, it looked like his fate would be determined by a jury of his peers and, separately, a million or so New York voters. Ever since Adams cut his quid pro quo deal with the Trump administration to hold his indictment in abeyance while he cooperates with the president’s unpopular mass deportation drive, the city has been in a democratic crisis.
The one person with the legal authority to remove Adams is Gov. Hochul. While Hochul catches all kinds of political heat for her long, drawn-out hesitation, she’s not wrong to be concerned about the precedent she would set by removing a democratically elected mayor from office.
“Democratically elected” is doing some heavy lifting in these abstract concerns. We should not forget that among Adams’ alleged crimes, he stole tax money earmarked for fairer elections by making large foreign donations look like qualified, small donations from actual New York voters. The result, one could argue, was a stolen election in 2021. But, as urgently as Adams needs to become an ex-mayor, removing him from office will set a precedent fraught with the potential for abuse.
Why has nobody in the Council thought to take up a “vote of no confidence” in the mayor? Universities are no stranger to unaccountable executives and occasional unethical behavior from our leaders. And while we have a degree of representative governance, usually in the form of a faculty or academic senate, our powers are often as toothless as the City Council’s is in this case.