Let the strike watch begin (The Next Mayor)

The It's Our Money home page is your gateway to all of the latest news on contract negotiations.

With a work stoppage authorized by the membership of District Council 47 and a new deadline of July 15 set by the city workers, the strike watch is on. Reports of the authorization can be found in DN, Inky, Metro and KYW.

On the subject of contract negotiations, the Nutter administration has maintained their Steve Carlton-like freeze out of the media leaving us with only the union's side of the story to give us insight into what the hold up has been.

In Chris Brennan's story for the Daily News, Cathy Scott, President of District Council 47, said that the City offered a one-year extension of the current contract so that it could buy time to shore up the pensions and rework the health care arrangement. Scott also indicated that the city was looking for changes to the pension plan:

Scott said her union members are concerned about the pension changes. "There are no specifics about it, so we don't really know what the city is proposing on pensions but we know it is not to keep the present pension plan that we have," she said.

Could the city be looking to get the union to agree to some of the changes recommended by recent reports on the pension fund by Pew and PICA? We wrote about the Pew report back when this was The Next Mayor blog here.

Details may be hard to come by until the final agreements are hammered out. This is, however, the first public indication that we've seen that the Nutter administration may be looking for some pretty significant changes to the way the city pays for health care and pension benefits.