9486 in the collection  

New York Mayor's Face Intertwined with Head of Teachers' Union

As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, facing a re-election campaign next year, strives to achieve his overarching goals - improving schools, increasing work-force productivity and eliminating the budget deficit- one person more than any other has the power to help or hinder him: Randi Weingarten, the president of the city teachers' union.

Rarely have the political fortunes of a mayor and a union leader been so intertwined. Wearing two important hats, as the leader of 80,000 teachers and as chairwoman of the coalition of all municipal unions, she has sometimes made Mr. Bloomberg's life difficult and at other times helped deliver some of his biggest victories.

She played a pivotal role, for instance, in persuading Albany to give Mr. Bloomberg direct control of the schools, which he had ardently sought. But their relationship has been so contentious that business leaders have been pressuring them to cooperate, warning the mayor that his education initiatives will otherwise fail.

Partly as a result of this pressure, their on-again, off-again relationship seems to be on again. Earlier this month, Ms. Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, stood with the mayor as he unveiled plans to send police squadrons into a dozen of the most dangerous schools. Last month they cut a major deal on health benefits that will save the city $100 million a year, the mayor's most important accord yet with the city's labor unions.

But with the teachers' contract talks starting next month, city officials, labor leaders and other experts warn that the recent warmth could be short-lived.

"There is this unusual confluence of circumstances that raises the stakes in their relationship - the mayor has complete control of the schools for the first time, and the U.F.T. is headed by the same person who heads the whole labor coalition," said Edmund J. McMahon, a senior fellow in tax and budget studies at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group. "The mayor has two priorities - fix education and save money to close his budget gap - and both of those priorities are aimed right at Randi Weingarten."

Complicating matters, Ms. Weingarten heads the Municipal Labor Committee, representing nearly 300,000 city workers, at a time when the contract of virtually every municipal union has expired. And she is fuming at Mr. Bloomberg's insistence that there be no raises unless the unions agree to productivity concessions to finance them.

"They're wrapped in an embrace that neither can completely get out of," said Norman Adler, a veteran consultant to many politicians and unions. "On one day they're at each other's throat, as often happens with labor and management, and on another day they're holding hands and gazing lovingly in each other's eyes because they both need the school system to succeed."

Ms. Weingarten and Bloomberg administration officials acknowledge that their relationship has improved in recent weeks, but both sides caution that there is no long-term peace treaty. Deputy Mayor Marc V. Shaw, who oversees labor relations for the city, said it was too early to say that City Hall and Ms. Weingarten had turned a corner. "To describe this as a thaw is a little inaccurate," he said. "It's just that we continue to do business. When we conduct business that's positive, everybody's happy."

He continued: "This is a mayor that has interactions with people, and whether they're good or bad, he moves on and tries to move on in a positive fashion. We continue to do business with them because that's part of our job and our mandate."

Ms. Weingarten also hesitated to say there was a thaw. "Clearly people believe that in the last two months, there is a thaw, and you know maybe, I would hope that that's true," she said in a 90-minute interview. But she suggested that the recent cooperation by City Hall might be isolated incidents signifying no lasting improvement in relations.

Then she went on a tear, describing how the mayor and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein had dictated to teachers, often bypassing the union in making important decisions and at times ignoring the contract. She complained of top-down micromanagement in which some education officials told teachers where to place wastebaskets and how to arrange bulletin boards, including how borders should look, what colors to use and exactly how many student papers to display.

"There is only going to be a real thaw in the relationship when they view the teachers as very important resources in how education gets delivered in this city," Ms. Weingarten said. "If you always look at teachers as a vessel that should be managed, as opposed to the most important human resource capital you have in education, then there is going to be real friction between City Hall and Tweed and the union."

Ms. Weingarten said much of the friction stemmed from the mayor's having had little experience in dealing with unions during the years that made him a billionaire entrepreneur. As a result, she said, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein can often be high-handed in dealing with the union and teachers. They don't understand unions, and they certainly don't understand the U.F.T.," she said.

While there is mutual mistrust on a professional level, on a personal level Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Bloomberg do not dislike each other, aides and associates said. They do not speak or meet regularly, but when they do, the interactions are cordial, even friendly at social events. On a daily basis, Ms. Weingarten is in more constant contact with Chancellor Klein and aides like Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott, the mayor's right-hand man on education issues.

Mr. Klein, in an interview, said relations with the union had improved recently, but he said management and the teachers union would never see eye to eye on everything.

"I think this has been a positive time," the chancellor said, citing cooperation on school safety and the mayor's plan for strict new promotion requirements for third graders. "There are areas where we have very aligned interests and we have worked together effectively to deal with those."

But Mr. Klein, too, cautioned against reading too much into the recent cooperation. He pointed to the union's opposition to a city proposal to pay higher salaries in areas like math and science, where teachers are in short supply. "It's not a question of, is it a thaw or not a thaw?" he said. "There are going to be divergent views."

One source of mistrust is the administration's view that her union will never support the mayor for re-election. In the interview, however, Ms. Weingarten would not rule out the possibility. "You never say never about virtually anything," she said. "I don't want to prematurely talk about the '05 elections. Lots and lots of things can happen."

Still, she quickly heaped praise on the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., a former Board of Education president who is considered a likely Democratic challenger to Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican.

Relations between the mayor and Ms. Weingarten have deteriorated badly since Mr. Bloomberg's pre-mayoral days, when he made her a regular dinner guest and offered her a position as deputy mayor and even asked if she would consider being schools chancellor.

Last May, Ms. Weingarten said she felt betrayed and outraged when he laid off more than 800 school aides who belonged to her union. And the mayor said he felt betrayed and outraged when she responded with a lawsuit, which is still pending, accusing his administration of racial discrimination when it laid off these workers, almost all of them black and Hispanic.

Relations grew even frostier when Ms. Weingarten withdrew her initial support for his plans to revamp school administration in all five boroughs. Shortly afterward, Chancellor Klein denied nearly all sabbaticals for teachers - a move that Ms. Weingarten said blatantly violated the teachers' contract.

Mr. Klein and other city officials further angered Ms. Weingarten by belittling her as a defender of the educational status quo and by calling for an end to tenure.

The relationship and the rhetoric remained bitter until early December, when Mr. Bloomberg was forced to acknowledge serious problems with school safety and discipline that resulted directly from flaws in his reorganization of the school system.

His administration turned to Ms. Weingarten for help, and she went to City Hall on a Friday night to huddle with Mr. Klein and Deputy Mayor Walcott.

Since then, despite a few bumps, there have been several developments indicating improved relations. First there was the deal on health benefits. Then Ms. Weingarten suggested cutting to six months the time it takes to remove incompetent teachers, speeding up a process that can now take years. It was a proposal that pleased some of her union's fiercest critics.

But new strains have begun to show in their relationship, as when the mayor recently proposed $400 property tax rebates to homeowners, made possible, he said, by the city's improved financial picture.

Speaking for the municipal unions, Ms. Weingarten wondered aloud why, if there was money for rebates, was there not money for raises? "He took the moral position that there is money for certain things but not for raises," she said. "That position looks mean-spirited."

The biggest stumbling block in the negotiations for the teachers and other unions could be Mr. Bloomberg's insistence that wage increases be financed by productivity increases.

Ms. Weingarten called on the mayor to move away from this position. "Our members need raises - their living costs have increased," she said, pointing to increases in rents, college tuition and subway fares . "Ultimately, there are a lot of unions willing to discuss changes to make services more efficient. But they also need a base increase in wages."

But Deputy Mayor Shaw warned that there was no money for raises. "We would all like to pay the work force higher wages," he said. "But considering the fiscal difficulties the city still faces, the only way to move in that direction is to find productivity in the current work force."

Ms. Weingarten suggested that the Bloomberg administration had adopted a contradictory bargaining strategy. On one hand, it was calling for pattern bargaining, meaning all unions would receive the same level of raises. The teachers and the police dislike that because they argue that, with their salaries below those of their suburban counterparts, they deserve higher raises than other unions.

On the other hand, Mr. Bloomberg is demanding a major concession from the teachers that he is not seeking from other unions. He has called for replacing the 250-page teachers' contract with a thin contract that would scrap most work rules.

In what Ms. Weingarten considers a major concession to the mayor, she proposed experimenting with a thin contract at up to 150 schools. But Mr. Bloomberg wants such a contract in all 1,200 schools. Ms. Weingarten warned that her membership would not agree to City Hall's demand for such a sweeping, across-the-board change.

"That would spell the death knell of any opportunity to really try to experiment in this regard, and that would be very sad," she said. "




— Steven Greenhouse and David M. Herszenhorn
Mayor's Fate Is Intertwined With Head of Teachers' Union
New York Times
2004-01-26


---

INDEX OF OUTRAGES

Pages: 380   
[1] 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>    Last >>