Bing imposes new union contracts with 10% wage cut, work rule changes

[Zacha341]

Well ok... where is this going? Strike?

Detroit Mayor imposes cuts for city worker pay, benefits

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/19...obref=obinsite

Bing imposes new union contracts with 10% wage cut, work rule changes

http://www.freep.com/article/2012071...k-rule-changes

[corktownyuppie]

A strike would be a disaster for the union. With unemployment as high as it is, scab labor would not be hard to recruit, and I think the result would be on par with the Free Press and airline strikes in the mid-90s. They'll make their point, get on national news, and never come back to the same job again.

[Wesley Mouch]

A strike would be a disaster for the union. With unemployment as high as it is, scab labor would not be hard to recruit, and I think the result would be on par with the Free Press and airline strikes in the mid-90s. They'll make their point, get on national news, and never come back to the same job again.

...because the gap between real workers and the privileges union workers club is so large.

[Lowell]

A strike would be a disaster for the union. With unemployment as high as it is, scab labor would not be hard to recruit, and I think the result would be on par with the Free Press and airline strikes in the mid-90s. They'll make their point, get on national news, and never come back to the same job again.

Depends on how it is done. A 'work to rule' type strike where workers do nothing more than defined by contract, sick-outs, blue flu and other tactics are all possible.

Not saying those are right or wrong, just noting that there are options outside wild-catting. At some point in time a "we're not gonna take it anymore" will be reached if continual cuts occur.

[313WX]

Here's a very good, detailed article today about all of this from Diane Bukowski at Voice of Detroit. It also shows a good breakdown of the union contract that was imposed.

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/07/18...-and-low-down/

[Locke09]

A strike would be a disaster for the union. With unemployment as high as it is, scab labor would not be hard to recruit, and I think the result would be on par with the Free Press and airline strikes in the mid-90s. They'll make their point, get on national news, and never come back to the same job again.

On the contrary, scab labor will be very hard to recruit in all but the most menial of jobs. Many fail to realize that a good percentage of city jobs are technical/professional, requiring degrees and even advanced degrees or training.

In all of the technical/professional categories, the City will have trouble recruiting, as it already does, because the salaries, even with benefits, are below industry standard. Lawyers, accountants, technology professionals, engineers, etc. - the City pays a heavy premium when it has to outsource those jobs. But of course no one is talking about that.

In many of those categories, the city will not be able to recruit new in-house staff because most qualified lawyers, technology people and engineers [[for instance) still expect to receive a good salary and decent benefits. When the city outsources those jobs, those individuals get benefits from their companies, and the city has the pleasure of paying for those benefits in the overhead charged by the companies. A company might pay a person $40 per hour, and then charge the city $100 - $120 per hour. They have to cover all their expenses and also make a profit after all.

Besides, what lawyer or engineer is going to sign on with the city and only get 5 days vacation for the first 5 years of employment? It would take 10 years for them to work their way up to two whole weeks vacation. That is well below standard in private industry.

[Scottathew]

...because the gap between real workers and the privileges union workers club is so large.

Ding.

Time for unions to wake up and smell the coffee.

[Shollin]

Ding.

Time for unions to wake up and smell the coffee.

It baffles me why people get so giddy to have union employees make less. How does driving down wages help anyone?

[Wheels]

Ding.

Time for unions to wake up and smell the coffee.

No that time was 20 years ago. Not much left to save now.

[stasu1213]

Public Safety workers had given up more than enough. I will be sadden to hear that the ones who are protecting us are collecting food stamps for they had become the working poor. They have more territory to cover with fewer manpower. Remove Bing's and council's security detail from them especially around the Manoogian Mansion since the city is in dire condition. The residents are being deprive of adequate protection.

[MichiganMan]

I just talked to a 17 year DPD cop who works the night shift. He told me that Bing is really messing with the work rules. Bing wants to eliminate all over time. The cop said he works his 40 hours and gets two hours of overtime to come down to the courts for whatever court appearance is necessary. I’m not sure if this is for each case or two hours per week. I would think it would be for each hearing/arraignment or trial. Bing wants or did eliminate this overtime. The cop said that a bunch of them got together and decided not to spend their “off time” going to court. I don’t blame them one bit atall. Day shift cops probably go to court during their shift time and not on their evening hours at home. He said if you want to commit a crime in the city, do it at night because you have an excellent shot at getting off the charges when the cops don’t show up to court.

[townonenorth]

I just talked to a 17 year DPD cop who works the nightshift. He told me that Bing is reallymessing with the work rules. Bing wantsto eliminate all over time. The cop saidhe works his 40 hours and gets two hours of overtime to come down to the courtsfor whatever court appearance is necessary. I’m not sure if this is for each case or two hours per week. I would think it would be for each hearing/arraignmentor trial. Bing wants or did eliminatethis overtime. The cop said that a bunchof them got together and decided not to spend their “off time” going tocourt. I don’t blame them one bit atall. Day shift cops probably go to courtduring their shift time and not on their evening hours at home. He said if you want to commit a crime in thecity, do it at night because you have an excellent shot at getting off thecharges when the cops don’t show up to court.

So make a night court. Remember the TV program?

[Locke09]

It baffles me why people get so giddy to have union employees make less. How does driving down wages help anyone?

Some people don't like being low man on the totem pole. They like having someone beneath them. Others are simply hoping to profit from having indentured servants.

[313WX]

Just an observation, but while reading the Free Press article about the meeting DPD officers had yesterday, all of the police officers they interviewed live outside the city.

Not to blame the unions, but don't they think their lack of property tax revenue for the last 15 years has anything to do with Detroit's fiscal situation today?

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Some people don't like being low man on the totem pole. They like having someone beneath them. Others are simply hoping to profit from having indentured servants.

Ditto to that. All this union busting going on, unions are the reason most people make what they have now. I'm convinced that is Snyder's ultimate goal is to make Michigan a Right to Work state.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

I just talked to a 17 year DPD cop who works the nightshift. He told me that Bing is reallymessing with the work rules. Bing wantsto eliminate all over time. The cop saidhe works his 40 hours and gets two hours of overtime to come down to the courtsfor whatever court appearance is necessary. I’m not sure if this is for each case or two hours per week. I would think it would be for each hearing/arraignmentor trial. Bing wants or did eliminatethis overtime. The cop said that a bunchof them got together and decided not to spend their “off time” going tocourt. I don’t blame them one bit atall. Day shift cops probably go to courtduring their shift time and not on their evening hours at home. He said if you want to commit a crime in thecity, do it at night because you have an excellent shot at getting off thecharges when the cops don’t show up to court.

Not trying to be funny but is your space bar stuck?

[corktownyuppie]

On the contrary, scab labor will be very hard to recruit in all but the most menial of jobs. Many fail to realize that a good percentage of city jobs are technical/professional, requiring degrees and even advanced degrees or training.

In all of the technical/professional categories, the City will have trouble recruiting, as it already does, because the salaries, even with benefits, are below industry standard. Lawyers, accountants, technology professionals, engineers, etc. - the City pays a heavy premium when it has to outsource those jobs. But of course no one is talking about that.

In many of those categories, the city will not be able to recruit new in-house staff because most qualified lawyers, technology people and engineers [[for instance) still expect to receive a good salary and decent benefits. When the city outsources those jobs, those individuals get benefits from their companies, and the city has the pleasure of paying for those benefits in the overhead charged by the companies. A company might pay a person $40 per hour, and then charge the city $100 - $120 per hour. They have to cover all their expenses and also make a profit after all.

Besides, what lawyer or engineer is going to sign on with the city and only get 5 days vacation for the first 5 years of employment? It would take 10 years for them to work their way up to two whole weeks vacation. That is well below standard in private industry.

I agree with all your analysis. The only thing is that your assumption is that the city would have to rehire the same number of employees.

Every time someone makes the argument that privatization costs more because someone has to make a profit on the labor is assuming that instead of having 4 city employees, we will now have 4 private employees plus 1 owner who's making his or her money by charging a profit.

The reason why the private sector [[generally) provides better services at lower costs is because of competition. If we have 4 city employees doing a job, who's to say that it can't be done with 1 full-time and 1 part-time employee? Even with the owner making his profit, you're still spending less money.

And the best thing is that if the cost savings aren't there or they underperform, then fire that company and replace them with another company.

The only exception where this might not hold, IMHO, is public safety.

[Lowell]

Some people don't like being low man on the totem pole. They like having someone beneath them. Others are simply hoping to profit from having indentured servants.

So true. Anti-union elements have been skillful at exploiting envy of non-union labor, blinding them to the fact that the price for their labor is bench-marked and driven upward by what union workers get.

They overlook that as the union employees are beaten down they will move down the totem poles and those whining 'low men on the totem' pole will be squeezed off.

Unions bear some of the blame for not countering those arguments and for failing to organize the un-organized. That lapse started in the 60's and the 70's when they were fat, happy and seemingly untouchable. They overlooked that business never rests.

Destroy the unions and the pressure they put on wages and the destruction of the American middle class follows. We are witnessing that right now.

[bailey]

Just an observation, but while reading the Free Press article about the meeting DPD officers had yesterday, all of the police officers they interviewed live outside the city.

Not to blame the unions, but don't they think their lack of property tax revenue for the last 15 years has anything to do with Detroit's fiscal situation today?

THIS.

It's not about union busting, it's about aligning revenue with expenditures. All y'all City employees want your 10% back? Stop living in another city. Imagine the impact on funding if all 30,000 [[combined city and DPS...the city's two largest employers) folks making solidly middle class and up wages ACTUALLY lived in the city and paid into the system from which their salary is derived. That would also go for everyone decrying this from their perch out in Shelby or Farmington or where ever. Want to save these jobs and payscale? Move.

I think we as a state would be pretty pissed to find out that 30,000 state employees lived in Ohio... wouldn't we? Why is there no acknowledgement of the unsustainability of detroit's employment picture? [[and that's not even touching how overstaffed the city is in the first place.)

This is not rocket science here nor is it a nefarious plot by white folks in lansing enslave blacks or impose right to work.

Not to be silly but c'mon, you have $A coming in and you subtract from it $B going out in order to get $C. Ideally $C would be a positive number...or zero. However, $C being negative isn't sustainable for very long...and certainly not for 30 years.

Bankruptcy, EFM, or more of this is coming for the city because for way too long no one address any of the real structual problems with the City. Pretending like its all a conspiracy and delaying action is just another denial of reality that is only going to make it all worse.

[Wesley Mouch]

Among the 'draconian' cuts listed in the cited article.... elimination of the 13th 'bonus' check.

The financial crisis deniers believe that this is just a plot by bankers to take all the money and let the rest of us suffer.

The anti-union side sees public sector workers who are overpaid and inefficiently utilized.

Does anyone have any good impartial information?

[Locke09]

I agree with all your analysis. The only thing is that your assumption is that the city would have to rehire the same number of employees.

Every time someone makes the argument that privatization costs more because someone has to make a profit on the labor is assuming that instead of having 4 city employees, we will now have 4 private employees plus 1 owner who's making his or her money by charging a profit.

The reason why the private sector [[generally) provides better services at lower costs is because of competition. If we have 4 city employees doing a job, who's to say that it can't be done with 1 full-time and 1 part-time employee? Even with the owner making his profit, you're still spending less money.

And the best thing is that if the cost savings aren't there or they underperform, then fire that company and replace them with another company.

The only exception where this might not hold, IMHO, is public safety.

Actually, I'm not making assumptions. The City already does outsourcing and it isn't saving any money by doing so. Rather than having fewer employees doing a job, the city, via its consulting contracts, has many jobs split up among more persons, each at a higher cost. Again, I'm only speaking of technical/professional positions, but those are the ones that cost the most.

And it's not just the private employees plus one owner. It's also the owner's office support staff, any training the owner gives to the employees, the "engagement manager: who is managing the contract for the owner, and myriad other persons. That is the reality.

Besides, if a job can be done with fewer persons, then the city should do it with fewer persons and still save more money than contracting it out.

Ask yourself why no newspaper is asking what the city is already paying consultants vs. employees. So far, I see no evidence that anyone is going to turn their attention to bad contracts with private non-unionized companies now.

[mwilbert]

You really can't just hear the word "outsource" and know whether it will be cheaper/better or not. Outsourcing is like anything else; it needs to be managed. If you have lousy management, you will probably sign a lousy contract with the outsourcer. If you can't manage the contract once it is signed, you will probably get lousy service. Of course if you can't manage your employees, you will also get lousy service.

We know there are some things that the city should stop doing because they are really bad at them, like generating and distributing electricity. We know this because there are other people doing it and we can easily compare the costs and the quality of the services. But that is a particularly easy case--most city services are not as well-defined nor do they have as well-established metrics. The less clear-cut, the less likely you will be able to outsource successfully, particularly without competent management.

[Wesley Mouch]

You really can't just hear the word "outsource" and know whether it will be cheaper/better or not. Outsourcing is like anything else; it needs to be managed. If you have lousy management, you will probably sign a lousy contract with the outsourcer. If you can't manage the contract once it is signed, you will probably get lousy service. Of course if you can't manage your employees, you will also get lousy service.

We know there are some things that the city should stop doing because they are really bad at them, like generating and distributing electricity. We know this because there are other people doing it and we can easily compare the costs and the quality of the services. But that is a particularly easy case--most city services are not as well-defined nor do they have as well-established metrics. The less clear-cut, the less likely you will be able to outsource successfully, particularly without competent management.

Very good points.

Given however that there are thousands upon thousands of cities in the US and worldwide -- I think good management would find well-established metrics for just about anything. I do grant you that Detroit would be a tough case -- given its immense size and near total disinvestment.

The problem is that Detroit's leadership hasn't fostered good management. When Detroit switched to a 'strong mayor' government in 1974 [[yes?) it also elected a 'strong mayor' in Coleman A. Young. He was much more interested in issues of control and power than he was in maintaining the existing, mostly white bureaucracy. I do understand why CAY acted as he did -- but the end effect was to toss aside years of tremendous competence in favor of political allegiances. [[And let's not even get started on KK's beyond saying that he had a distorted sense of what skills were most useful on the job.)

We are now paying the price for years of mismanagement.

It will take decades.

That's why I think its best to start over.

[Locke09]

Sorry to disappoint people but most, if not all, city services are well-defined and have been for years. Job descriptions are very specific, in some cases maybe too specific. Believe it or not, city departments also have metrics. And employees have performance plans with goals and measures - even union employees. Some of the metrics are standardized and some are specific to that employee and that employee's specific job. Merit increases have been at least partially tied to performance plans for years.

In fact, you can go back to the CAY era and find employees who will tell you they had performance plans with goals and measures. Why do people assume this is a foreign concept to government?

I suppose people simply surmise what helps feed their stereotypes and don't even bother finding out how the city really operates. Sure there has been mismanagement, and most of it is in the area of projects and contracts with vendors. The biggest problem with the city is having people appointed to executive positions who probably shouldn't be leading anything larger than a small workgroup.

I know enough about the city to know that you are about to have a caste system in city employment now. You will have the city workers who have taken deep pay cuts and benefits cuts. Then you will have the contractual workers still commanding high salaries. The contractual employees will be boasting about the training their company is providing for them [[which the city will be paying for as part of their "rate") while the city employees will get to hear how dumb and incompetent they are because there is no funding to keep their skills up to date. The contractual employees will take a month long trip back to the country of their origin on their vacation, while the city employees will have five days they can spend on their front porch.

[Wesley Mouch]

Sorry to disappoint people but most, if not all, city services are well-defined and have been for years. Job descriptions are very specific, in some cases maybe too specific. Believe it or not, city departments also have metrics. And employees have performance plans with goals and measures - even union employees. Some of the metrics are standardized and some are specific to that employee and that employee's specific job. Merit increases have been at least partially tied to performance plans for years.

In fact, you can go back to the CAY era and find employees who will tell you they had performance plans with goals and measures. Why do people assume this is a foreign concept to government?

I suppose people simply surmise what helps feed their stereotypes and don't even bother finding out how the city really operates. Sure there has been mismanagement, and most of it is in the area of projects and contracts with vendors. The biggest problem with the city is having people appointed to executive positions who probably shouldn't be leading anything larger than a small workgroup.

I know enough about the city to know that you are about to have a caste system in city employment now. You will have the city workers who have taken deep pay cuts and benefits cuts. Then you will have the contractual workers still commanding high salaries. The contractual employees will be boasting about the training their company is providing for them [[which the city will be paying for as part of their "rate") while the city employees will get to hear how dumb and incompetent they are because there is no funding to keep their skills up to date. The contractual employees will take a month long trip back to the country of their origin on their vacation, while the city employees will have five days they can spend on their front porch.

Wow. What bitterness. Understandable. But you got to the core of it -- that is the appointees who know nothing.

The metrics you describe are appropriate and certainly a sign of management.

The metrics I was referring to earlier were not measuring the employees of the city, but measuring the productivity of the city itself.

Is the city delivering results to its citizens for a cost that is greater or lesser than other municipalities?

Are the city employees compensated [[wages+benefits) more or less than those in other cities?

Why do these 'industry'-wide metrics matter? Because the Unions are crying about 'cuts'. If the employees are paid less than the median / average -- then they have an issue. If they are paid quite a bit more than average / median -- then they don't.