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By Root 1156 0

decide how to slice their share. Faced with an internal union challenge, UFT President Shanker, with the approval of the Board of Education, decided to gift larger slices of the pie to more numerous senior teachers. In fiscal 1979, the increments for seventh-year teachers were increased by $250 (to $1,250) and eighth-year teachers were given $1,180 extra (a total of $2,180); in fiscal 1980, seventh-year teachers will receive an additional $250 and those in their eighth year an extra $1,250 (or $2,250 in increments). Also, over the two years of the contract, teachers with ten to fifteen years on the job will receive an additional $500 bonus, bringing their longevity pay to $2,000. Those with more than fifteen years’ service will receive an extra $1,000 over the two years. Instead of a flat 8 percent raise, Shanker chose to increase increments and longevity pay by an amount greater than 8 percent. However, those teachers with five years or less of service will not share in these raises. Over the two years they will receive their COLA I payments ($777), their cost-of-living bonus ($1,500), their four increments ($2,000) and their three back increments ($1,650). It’s not peanuts, but it’s less than most teachers will get. “It was a brilliant move by Shanker,” observed Michael Rosenbaum, a city negotiator who used to work for D.C. 37. “All of the younger teachers were laid off. Few have been hired. Only about 10 percent of the teachers will not benefit, I would guess.” He guessed about right. Shanker’s union approved the pact by a vote of 44,858 to 4,485.

Thus, in “grocery money,” over the two years of the contract many teachers could receive 40 percent above their base salary. Assuming an $18,000 base salary, watch:

Depending on what you count, the two-year pay increase ranged from 6.7 percent to about 40 percent. When you count just “grocery money,” the cost of the two-year settlement can be seen as rivaling the 39 percent three-year contract won earlier that year by the coal miners. When you confront city and union officials with these higher percentages, they complain that it’s unfair to count as “new money” benefits that have previously been received (as we have seen, this is not what union leaders say to their members). There is merit to this argument, but those who make it usually try to have it both ways. On the one hand, they argue that workers went three years without a raise; on the other, they claim post-1978 raises should not be counted because they are similar to the raises received over the previous three years.

“Measured by the normal standards of labor-management relations,” pronounced labor attorney Theodore Kheel, “the settlement is quite reasonable.” But these were not “normal” times. Measured against Koch’s pledge for “a no-cost labor contract,” the settlement was extravagant. Measured against the city’s proclaimed four-year budget deficit of over $1 billion, and the knowledge that New York was asking federal taxpayers to take some risk to help finance this deficit through loan-guarantees, the settlement seems less modest. Measured against the management changes the city sought and lost, the contract represented business-as-usual. Once again, the city was deciding to divert whatever cash “surpluses” or budget savings it achieved not to reduce the overall deficit, not to cut taxes to make the city more competitive economically, not to improve services or rebuild crumbling streets and bridges, but to grant wage increases. “We gave them all the money we have, no question about that,” Koch softly conceded.

Throughout the negotiations, people asked the wrong question. The question was not whether it is an “outrage” when workers’ salaries fall behind rising inflation (it is); nor whether workers had borne a burden throughout the crisis (they had); nor whether their pay was slipping in comparison to the pay of other workers (it was) The right question is: What can New York afford? The settlement widened New York’s four-year budget gap, increased the price to be paid two years hence when the contracts expire