Today on Radio Times, guest host Dave Davies will be talking to Thomas Paine Cronin, immediate past president of AFSCME District Council 47, the union representing the city's 6,500 white collar workers. He's served in the post since 1980 and leading the union though negotiations with six mayors and six strikes.
Perhaps he'll share his thoughts on the next mayor's unenviable task of negotiating new contracts with all of the city's unions.
Tune into 91FM at 10 am (just 10 minutes from now!) or click here for instructions on how to listen live over the internet. Later today, I'll provide a link to the podcast of the show, just in case you were unable to hear it live.
(edited to add) Here's the podcast of today's show. You can right click on it (or, Mac users, Ctrl Click) and save it as an .mp3. I'm a little disappointed that the conversation didn't get more into the city's current and future financial condition and how the next set of contract negotiations need to take that in account. Cronin's stories about his dealings with past mayors - especially the one about the time a the FOP president aimed a gun at Mayor Green's chest - are pretty interesting.
You can also participate in the show by calling 1-888-477-9499 or using the comments section of this blog post to get your thoughts out there.
Comments (2)
There has to be some future creative thinking by union leaders, like accepting co-pays.
Who doesn't have one these days?
Also, the city should contract with an a company that organizes overseas medical care. This is a huge cost savings other companies do already.
It gives the employee the option - have a large deductable and get your gall bladder surgury here, or have the procedure free and go to Mexico, India, or Thailand for it to the luxury hospitals that do the same surgury by docs trained in the US.
This could halve the cost of city employee/pensioner health care.
Otherwise, Nutter simply has to hire union busting lawyers to go at the root and start using contractors to do more and more city employee work.
I think all three items are a must. No city these days uses its own payroll to do virtually all the services it needs anymore.
Posted by Anonymous | October 2, 2007 7:45 PM
Nutter has to totally reverse the Street course of enlarging city government, benefits, and pensions, and start to reduce.
That means the city government can't be and do all things, just the basics. Trash, street cleaning, schools, safety.
The fitness guru and the redevelopment agencies who should be called the neverredevelop agencies, the PHA, all this extra stuff can't be at the fore anymore, if at all. PHA can sell all that scattered site housing if it wants to build new stuff. Senior only housing is a must, but the city can't foot the bill. PHA has to think differently.
The feds and state can fund housing.
The private market can create jobs. The city shouldn't be trying to hire youths, hire ex cons, etc. The market does that if encouraged.
And the city can't keep its low income voters in place by not charging them what they use in water, gas, and taxes. This includes churches, mosques, large blocks of voters, who want to not get tickets, not pay them, not pay utilities, not pay their property taxes...
The city under Street tried to become a huge welfare agency. NYC and Chicago show that when the city focuses on the market, the market can do most of what philly.gov tries to do with dozens of agencies that can't.
Posted by Anonymous | October 2, 2007 7:54 PM