When he first came into City Hall in 2014, Mayor de Blasio brought with him a labor-friendly sheen after more than a decade of Mike Bloomberg, the technocratic city father who for years allowed municipal labor contracts to lapse without renewing them.
De Blasio, who likes to pepper his talking points with references to “good-paying” jobs and “everyday New Yorkers,” made good on his promise to prioritize those contracts and settled most of them within three years time.
“He did the right thing,” said Ed Ott, former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “He did that on principal.”
During his tenure, de Blasio has also notably maintained close ties with the unions that represent hotel workers, teachers and service employees.
In the early years of his administration, his connections to the Hotel Trades Council, the UFT, the health care workers union SEIU/1199, and Communication Workers of America District 1 and 32BJ, which represents doormen and buildings staff, earned them a memorable moniker among politicos: the Five Families, after the organized Mafia groups that once ruled the city’s underworld.
But after six and a half years in City Hall — and during a pandemic and dire financial situation that could lead to thousands of layoffs to municipal workers — labor’s overall view of him has dimmed substantially.
“He is the chief fiscal officer of the city. He should have been prepared for this,” Ott said of the fiscal crisis. “He had a reserve fund. He dwindled it down, and he doesn’t have a whole lot to show for it.”
Greg Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, has been a regular critic of the mayor over the years, but Floyd said it hasn’t been because the mayor intentionally tried to hurt labor.
“He’s been pretty fair to the unions. But now we’re coming to a point where no matter how fair you want to be, reality is setting in,” he said. “It’s catching up to him. The mismanagement and the spending of funds early on in his administration is catching up to him.”
Part of the problem, according to one well-placed union source, is that de Blasio squandered so much of his political capital before the pandemic and now has to rely on his remaining labor allies to carry his water in Albany in a push to secure more borrowing power.
De Blasio has pressed the issue for months to avoid laying off municipal workers, but fiscal hawks argue he hasn’t exhausted other options.
Other critics contend that if the mayor had a better working relationship with state legislators and Gov. Cuomo, whom he’s feuded with famously over the years, borrowing would not be as difficult an ask.
“He’s just not good at the job of managing the government,” the union source said. “He spent whatever political capital he himself had. And now he has to rely on others, particularly labor, to get stuff done. We’re spending political capital on something we shouldn’t have to.”
Supporters of the mayor contend such assessments are too harsh and say no one could have predicted or fully prepared for what the city is now facing.
“Some unions are at war with him,” said Fausto Sabatino, president of DC 37 Local 1070, which represents court workers. “I don’t think anyone could have foreseen this disaster.”
Bob Master, the political director for CWA District 1, described de Blasio’s relationship with labor as “intact.”
“He’s in a circumstance where there’s been enormous challenges placed on the bargaining relationship,” Master said. “For the most part, he’s dealt with labor fairly. At times, I think the communication could be a lot better.”
City Hall spokesman Bill Neidhardt suggested de Blasio could not have been more prepared and that, like Mayor Bloomberg, de Blasio has been socking away cash in city reserves during his time in City Hall.
“It’s a rainy day fund, not a tsunami fund,” Neidhardt said. “The economic pain brought on by the pandemic is greater than the Great Depression.”
Under the current Doomsday scenario, even the mayor’s closest labor allies are suffering. Thousands of hotel workers are still out of work because of the pandemic. And teachers face possible layoffs and recently considered striking over his plan to resume in-person learning.
And while de Blasio is right to suggest that the pandemic’s arrival in New York was not in his control, his critics contend that’s not really the issue.
They say he did not prepare enough fiscally for calamity — whether it be a pandemic, terrorist attack or hurricane — and that it is now leading to union workers fearing they will lose once-stable jobs.
That, they say, is also apparent even as he expanded the city’s labor force by about 30,000 jobs during his tenure.
Vinny Variale, president of Uniformed EMS Officers Local 3621, said some of the pain his members are feeling became starkly apparent as COVID had them working around the clock for weeks. While the number of the city jobs increased substantially under de Blasio, Variale said he didn’t have enough workers to address the city’s needs in its most desperate hour.
“He understaffed us. Put our lives in danger,” Variale said. “He claims he’s the mayor of labor. What has he done for labor? Our members are still without a contract.”
