Three months ago, when the Miami-Dade Commission restored a 5% concession to the county airport and sanitation employees, Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa repeatedly said that she could not give to one group and not the others when their time came.
She even used the analogy
of her children, saying she couldn’t give one milk and deny it to another.
Well, apparently, she can.
Despite voting in favor of returning the 5% additional healthcare contribution — part of 16% in concessions that employee unions agreed to in 2009, by the way — Sosa became the swing vote Tuesday in upholding Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s veto on that Dec. 5 decision. Because a veto override needs a super majority of nine votes, an 8-3 decision was overturned by five of 13 votes.
Really.
Some local labor leaders are as incredulous as Ladra and the PBA has filed a lawsuit on the matter, saying that while Gimenez can veto a commission vote, he cannot as strong mayor veto the vote of the commission acting as a quasi-judicial body in an impasse hearing. Who ever heard of one party in a dispute having the power to tell a judge or mediator to blow it out his ear because he doesn’t like the decision that was reached? That’s what we got here, basically.
And the commission should have rejected the veto based on that alone, leave out the pesky little checks and balances thing, which is why everyone on that board — including the majority that voted in favor of restoring the workers’ pay, twice, by the way — are elected to represent the people.
It was a bit of a surprise to many people who expected another veto override, just like the one Gimenez got in September when he vetoed the pay restoration — which was always intended and is in the contract to go back to them on Jan. 1, 2014, by the way — to the other workers. Even the mayor’s office was not sure how it would go. One staffer indicated to Ladra Monday that they expected an override when he said Gimenez vetoed knowing “on principle.” But spokesman Fernando Figuero said he thought the mayor felt good going into the meeting.
“I’m not so sure the Mayor was so surprised since he made a very compelling argument in his veto message to the commission and he felt we would have the five votes needed,” Figueroa wrote me in response to emailed questions.
“The Mayor did say in general to the media that he was grateful to the five commissioners who voted to sustain his veto because now the administration can continue focusing on closing the current fiscal year budget gap without having to worry about the bigger gap that returning the 5% would have caused,” Figueroa added.
Some county workers and labor union leaders did not expect Commissioner Juan Zapata, who missed the original Dec. 5 meeting and maybe shouldn’t have been voting, union leaders say, unless he reviewed all 13 hours on video later (he can always say he saw it on the video afterwards). Some did not expect Sosa to switch but others suggested she has not been consistent on labor issues.
“Nobody is perfect and I make mistakes like everybody else,” Sosa told Ladra late Tuesday afternoon. “But I make my decisions on good faith and based on the benefit for all.”
She said she made three conditions exceedingly clear when she voted for the restoration on Dec. 5: (1) no dipping into reserves (2) no impact on services and (3) no line of credit to destabilize the county’s bond rating. She said she had to change her mind when she was told people would be laid off and parks might go without regular cleaning.
“I know it’s a sacrifice but everybody is sacrificing,” Sosa told me. “We did say they were going to get it back when the economy improves and I am hoping that they will have it in this coming year’s budget. We want this restored in the budget we get in July.
Zapata and Sosa were joined by Vice Chair Lynda Bell and Commissioners Steve “El Bobo” Bovo and Sally Heyman in voting against the veto override.
The only one who changed her vote, however, was Sosa.
She had originally voted two weeks ago to restore the five percent that most county employees have been contributing toward group group healthcare — this is in addition to their own healthcare premiums, by the way — but said Tuesday that she couldn’t move forward with that plan if it would cost dozens of jobs and cuts in services and public works, as Gimenez warned in what has become his go-to scare tactic: the increasingly common doom and gloom scenario.
“She believed the house of horrors laid out by the mayor,” said Terry Murphy, a former aide to former Commissioner Natacha Seijas who now works as a consultant for labor unions.
More than 100 employees would have to be laid off, Gimenez threatened. Yeah, I know, that wasn’t it. These people were willing to fire firefighters and librarians months ago. It was the sidewalks that wouldn’t get poured and the grass that wouldn’t get cut, oh my! These would be the harsh consequences if his veto was overturned in order to make up the $56 million hole that the pay restoration would cause, the mayor said.
But think about that in reverse for a minute? Because it is a $56 million hole regardless. Right now, as it stands, it is a $56 million hole in the homes of some 25,000 employees — your neighbors, your friends, the parents of the kids your kid goes to school with, the guy who lets you merge in front of him on 836, the woman who sits next to your mother on the bus. And it is $56 million taken out of their pockets and basically lost in a $4.4 billion operating budget that includes paying millions to consultant “friends” for projects that never see the light of day.
Really.
Ladra thinks a few of the commissioners seemed to be on the same page, the one titled “C’mon! There has to be another way to find money in this huge budget!” Commissioners Bruno Barreiro, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Barbara Jordan, Jean Monestime, Dennis Moss, Javier Souto and Xavier “Commissioner Mayor Sir” Suarez stuck to their original position on the employee pay and voted to override the Gimenez veto.
At one point, Diaz said we may need to look at having a “smaller workforce,” which I agree with but hopefully we start from the top and not the bottom, from the highest floors of the Stephen P. Clark Center and not the neighborhood libraries.
In fact, whatever happened to the promised efficiencies that the mayor’s initial changes, including the merging of departments — which resulted in the five deputy mayors with huge salaries, remember? — and other changes were supposed to bring? Did we really save anything? How much? And where did it go?
Ladra asked these questions Tuesday but did not get the answers yet. They may be good answers to have before bargaining units for the 11 separate unions meet again with the negotiator at the county — who is, by the way, the mayor, who has already shown them that he doesn’t negotiate in good faith. While he talked about one-time bonuses for the lowest paid workers and other commissioners brought up a compromise of 2% or 3%, union leaders do not feel like it’s a compromise.
“He takes a loaf of bread away from them, gives them half a loaf back and expects everybody to smile? How is that a compromise,” Murphy asks.
Union leaders and many county employees do not trust Gimenez. And they cited several unfair labor practices complaints and a Florida Public Employees Relations Commission ruling this month that said the county violated state law by bargaining in bad faith with the Police Benevolent Association in 2011.
And Gimenez certainly isn’t encouraged to negotiate more now because he holds all the cards — as in five-card poker.
“Gimenez and his group of five got what they wanted,” Murphy said. “I’m exhausted because you’re not dealing with intellectually honest people. There’s a political agenda here.”
“We should call him Comandante Gimenez, not Mayor Gimenez,” said PBA President John Rivera, who has long been in a battle of words with the commandan…er, mayor. “This is the American version of communism. This is a tax on employees.”
Sosa told Ladra the same thing she said to other reporters — that she hoped Gimenez got the message when she said she wanted him to negotiate for real this time. My words. Not hers. Hers were as follows.
“I told him I expect him to come back with something. I was very specific on that. The commission was very specific on that. He said today he would sit with them. Hopefully that is true,” Sosa said. “I’m willing to call a special meeting immediately.”
That would be because the next regularly scheduled commission meeting is Jan. 22.
Others are not so sure, however, that Gimenez is motivated to move from his give-nada-and-take-all position.
“The fact that they demoralized 25,000 employees by continuing to pick their pockets doesn’t even bother them,” Murphy told me. “When you’re dealing with that, when you’re not dealing with honest brokers, I don’t know how you can negotiate with that.”
Several union leaders told Ladra that Gimenez has come to the negotiations with an unmovable stance.
“I don’t think he’ll even call us,” said Rivera, who like some union leaders and county employees, expects the impasse to go right back to the commission (which, apparently, doesn’t have any teeth in this role).
“We should call him Comandante Gimenez, not Mayor Gimenez,” said Rivera, who has long been in a battle of words with the mayor, er, comandante. “This is the American version of communism. This is a tax on employees.”
“The mayor didn’t negotiate at the table and then he brought the impasse to commission,” said Martha Baker, president of the nurses’ union at Jackson Memorial Hospital, which was $100 million in the black last year and got an $830-million bond approved in November for capital improvement projects so they can now dip into that budget to restore employee salaries (more on that later).
Murphy said that different unions have suggested different ways to streamline and save money within their departments, but that the administration doesn’t want to hear about alternative solutions.
“This is such a charade. We gave him solutions on what he could do,” Murphy said, adding examples like financing the healthcare surplus. “If he wanted to solve this, he would.”
Emilio Azoy, who represents the 1,800 members of the Water and Sewer Department, echoed that.
“The union has been trying to bring some efficiencies to his attention and it has fallen on deaf ears,” Azoy told Ladra. “The bottom line is the administration never intended to negotiate. We met once and he said ‘This is my view and it’s my view or no view.'”
Why should the mayor change his approach? It’s been working for him so far.
And he indicated Tuesday that he was uncomfortable with the “recurring cost” that the 5% represents — which means what exactly for next year? And the year after that?
It seems to Ladra — and to anyone else who is watching carefully — that the economy will never improve enough to restore the workers’ pay.
Really.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez veto sticks, minority rules; now what? added by Ladra on
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