New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo and the unions: The governor's showdown is more subtle

The Economist:

IN 1975, when New York City teetered toward bankruptcy, Hugh Carey, then the governor of the state of New York, convinced the teachers' union to invest a significant amount of its pension funds in bail-out bonds. He also persuaded District Council 37 to shelve pay increases for its municipal workers. The unions played a crucial role in saving the city and probably the state with it. Thirty-five years later, during his gubernatorial campaign, Andrew Cuomo gave copies of "The Man Who Saved New York", an account of Mr Carey's role in the crisis, to labour leaders. Seymour Lachman, the book's co-author, reckons that, like Mr Carey, Mr Cuomo wants and needs the unions' help in surviving the current crisis.

Facing a $10 billion deficit, Mr Cuomo campaigned on pension reform, making it clear he was going to target public-sector unions and sounding more like his Republican neighbour across the Hudson, Chris Christie, than a Democrat. Mr Christie stirred up a lot of headlines when he took on the unions, most recently calling them greedy, selfish and self-interested. Mr Cuomo is less vitriolic, but no less adamant that he wants the unions to do their part. During his budget address on February 1st, in which he declared the state to be "functionally bankrupt", he called on the state's public-sector unions to make $450m in concessions. He threatened, as a "last resort", to lay off up to 9,800 state workers to get the savings needed.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 1, 2011 5:10 AM
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