Carlos Gimenez's new bait & switch: Pay cuts to benefits

In what can only be seen as another backpedal moment, at best, and another bait and switch, at worst, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez dropped his demand for 10 percent wage cut across the board for county employees, saying that he can balance the budget instead by reducing the workers’ healthcare benefits.

There are still 700 employees on the chopping block, if in addition to finding a 15% reduction in health costs, union leaders don’t agree to other concessions, including the freezing of all the bonuses, perks and pay enhancements, like overtime multipliers and holiday pay, that were set to “snap back” this October. Gimenez wants to extend those an additional three years.

Of course, he didn’t mention this at the meeting Tuesday. Instead, he announced his dream for a “benefits redesign” in letters sent to different labor union leaders Tuesday night, in which he said he sought “a commitment from you to work collectively” to shave 15 percent off benefits’ costs.

So, suddenly, now, after threatening layoffs and saying that only pay cuts would save the residents from raising taxes, he says he can find the funds to close the $64 million budget hole — shrunk from a $208 million gap — by changing the benefits employees get in their healthcare?

He has said publicly in radio interviews that the employees have a better than a Cadillac version of insurance. “A Rolls Royce,” he calls it. But he has been heard privately saying that he wants to put them in a Yugo.

But that is not exactly what he is telling the union leaders.

“Because of what we have been able to achieve through the budget development process, I am pleased to inform you that I am no longer proposing a 10 percent base pay reduction,” Gimenez wrote. His bold and his underline, not mine.

“Instead, I am now seeking a commitment from you to work collectively together to achieve a 15 percent overall savings in healthcare costs through benefits redesign and the continuation of all current concessions… I remain committed to achieving transparency in our contracts, making fundamental changes which provide for a sustainable budget in future years as well as pursuing the board”s direction regarding the recommendations made by the two Compensation and Benefits committees.”

What isn’t transparent in the letter or in his interviews on the radio or in the Miami Herald story is that there were already concessions made three years ago that resulted in $13 million in savings, according to several union leaders who spoke to Ladra.

Union leaders, who had already hinted that they would not accept such a one-sided, heavy handed approach to further whittle away their benefits, are not likely to accept this. They feel they have given up a lot already. Since the last negotiations, for example, county employee co-pays have gone up 50 percent. They have furlough days — forced days off without pay — and the average employee contribution to the general employee health trust fund has gone up from $9,000 to $11,000 a year.

The online dictionary defines concession as “the thing or point yielded,” and for an example, offered this sentence: “Management offered a shorter workweek as a concession.” Not in our town. In our county scenario, management offers nothing and demands that all the concessions be made for them.

“I’m willing to negotiate, but you don’t come to the table saying, ‘This is what I want and nothing else will do,” said Emilio Azoy, president of the AFSCME chapter that represents 1,800 Water and Sewer department workers union.

“He wants everything back and he is not giving anything in return. How is that negotiating?”

Azoy called the latest salvo from the mayor “an insult” to employees who have given and given and given in past negotiations for nada. Or for broken promises.

“Those things he wants to take away took 40 years to negotiate and were put in place because there were violations of law, because there were injuries,” Azoy said, adding that water and sewer workers do not get the hazard pay benefits that first responders get. “We go underground and we are exposed to hazardous fumes.”

There’s more. Please press this “continue reading” button to “turn the page.”

Pages: 1 2

budget cuts, Carlos Gimenez, labor issues

Carlos Gimenez’s new bait & switch: Pay cuts to benefits added by Ladra on July 2, 2014
View all posts by Ladra →