The harsh economic reality that continues to unfold and affect
all our lives is slowly seeping into the culture at City Hall.
The harsh economic reality that continues to unfold and affect all our lives is slowly seeping into the culture at City Hall. With the prescribed layoffs issued by the Gilroy City Council a couple of months ago becoming a reality this week, the writing is clearly on the wall. We’re in for tough times.
Unfortunately, there’s a paradigm paralysis on the part of city employee labor unions. Wishing it wasn’t so is not going to make this new economic reality disappear. The longer the unions attempt to prolong the current scenario as if everything is going to return to the proverbial “good ol’ days,” the harsher the pain of the new reality will be.
If the firefighters, for example, simply offer to delay for a few months negotiated pay raises in order to avoid layoffs, the union is fooling itself. The new reality is more likely to abolish the city fire department as we know it. Why? It’s simple. Gilroy simply can’t afford the high pay, the built-in overtime, the staffing requirements and certainly can’t shoulder the luxury benefits package.
It’s now about fiscal sustainability. The years of overflowing sales tax dollars and plump city reserves are over.
Everything should be on the negotiating table. If the unions were sharp instead of recalcitrant, the goal would be to find a way to preserve what’s sustainable and aid the return to common sense before some kind of economic Marshall Law is handed down from a federal government that can’t continue to bail out failing organizations.
One alternative is bankruptcy – the choice that the city of Vallejo made recently. That voids all the union contracts and gives the city a clean slate going forward.
A wiser course would include two-tier benefits which would significantly reduce the current package for new employees and raise co-pays for health insurance. It’s a case of pay me now, or pay me later. The best solutions, of course, would come from creative, cooperative efforts involving the unions and the city sooner rather than later.
