Freeze wages
Thousands of private sector workers in New York have lost jobs in recent years, accepted wage freezes, gone on unpaid furloughs or endured loss of benefits due to the economic downturn.
New York state itself is struggling with a $9.2 billion budget deficit due to a loss of revenue from Wall Street and other sources. The state's precarious position is already being felt in education cuts locally that will result in job losses. News that more than 300 positions will be cut by area schools in the coming year may be just a preview of things to come in other professions that depend on state aid.
New York's fiscal condition is so dire that it cannot even afford to keep its public parks open — a source of great disappointment among state residents.
No one is arguing that Gov. David A. Paterson has painted an unrealistically grim picture of New York's finances all these months. All agree the challenges are real.
Why, then, would the governor and leaders of the state Legislature not do more to prevent state workers from receiving a 4 percent pay raise starting April 1? The governor reportedly has been trying to get the state's two largest public employee unions to agree to a wage freeze after New York did not receive $750 million it was counting on because Wall Street bonuses were paid in stock rather than cash.
On April 1, Gov. Paterson issued a statement asking public employee unions to forego their raises. "In the last two years, more than 300,000 New Yorkers have lost their jobs," the governor noted. "Nearly 9 percent of the workers in our state are unemployed," he pointed out, listing the concessions that New Yorkers have been forced to make.
Stressing the seriousness of the state's crisis and the need for "shared sacrifice," the governor said: "That is why I am calling on the leaders of New York's public employee unions to agree to forego the 4 percent raises scheduled to go into effect today for their membership. This across-the-board salary increase, which is on top of a 9 percent raise provided over the last three years, is simply not affordable to taxpayers at a time when the state is facing an over $9 billion deficit."
Everyone must sacrifice something in light of the state's fiscal crisis, including members of the Civil Service Employees Association and the Public Employees Federation. The governor knows that and makes sense when he lays out the fiscal picture. But he and other state leaders will have to make a stronger point than simply asking the public employee unions not to accept these unrealistic raises.
As the governor said, taxpayers cannot afford what it will cost to raise the salaries of state workers at this time. He needs to make the point stick.
