The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [176]
Seniority provisions affected workers in another way. While 25,000 Indians were getting laid off, their chiefs, who enjoy seniority, became a privileged, untouchable class. Between May 1975 and February 1977, according to a Budget Bureau survey of those laid off, the percentage of city managers actually increased. In that period, employees earning less than $10,000 were reduced by 36.9 percent; those earning between $10,000 and $15,000, by 41 percent; those earning from $15,000 to $20,000 by 4 percent. Yet those earning from $20,000 to $25,000 climbed 8.1 percent; those between $25,000 and $30,000 soared 17.6 percent; and those making more than $30,000 went up 1.4 percent. The staffing of the City of New York sometimes resembles that of the Mexican army.
So managers did not “sacrifice.” The pay of city workers was not frozen. And the cost-of-living adjustments were not funded, as claimed by labor leader Barry Feinstein, “by increased worker productivity.” Nor was there “no cost to the city,” as claimed by Gotbaum, because COLA II payments were funded by “productivity.” In what Steve Berger, former Executive Director of the Control Board, called “the first great loophole,” in 1976 the Board required that only 50 percent of these cost-of-living adjustments be funded through “increased productivity.” Hoisting the white flag, they declared it permissible to fund the remaining 50 percent from budget cuts or increased state or federal aid. Thus New York, in its very own peculiar way, came to define reduced services (attrition) as improved “productivity.” And, ignoring a rather sizable budget gap, the city came to earmark any budget cuts or increased state and federal aid to increased worker compensation. Admittedly, it is often difficult to measure productivity, and workers were correct to charge the city and the Control Board with inexcusable delays in making payments to workers who met their productivity goals. But in June 1978 the Koch administration and the Control Board quit trying to define productivity and agreed to surrender the requirement altogether to expedite the remaining $567 COLA II payment that would have been due most workers. They also agreed that future payments would be called “bonuses” and would not require matching “productivity,” “other savings” or “other revenues.” The real problem with productivity seemed to be political, not definitional.
Labor leaders were not the only ones misleading the public. Governor Carey told the Congress in early 1978 that the city had reduced its work force by 66,000 over the three years. To arrive at this total, he counted 5,000 court workers who had been transferred to Albany’s payroll when the state assumed the cost of the courts, a bookkeeping change. City officials certified that the work force was slashed by 61,000, claiming 25,000 layoffs and another 36,000 through attrition. A careful check reveals this total is also false.
“These are 61,000 real bodies,” Budget Director James Brigham told me on March 20, 1978. But, he admitted, these numbers were “very rough” since the calculations “were done by hand” and they were “guessing” the exact number laid off vs. attrited.
“Does the 61,000 total include the more than 9,000 laid-off employees Beame rehired?” I asked.
“Yes, it does.”
“Does it include the 8,094 laid-off mayoral agency employees rehired on federal CETA lines?”
“It does.”
“Are you sure?”
He called back to say these CETA employees were not counted. Nor were the 10,000 rehired Board of Education employees, nor the 19,306 additional CETA employees working for the city as of June 30, 1978. Nor the other city employees supported by federal funds—like those financed