Mayor Mamdani: Fix para pay… and much more

Mayor Mamdani, you know I am rooting for you to succeed in all ways.

Your success creates a better, more equitable New York. Our success then sends signals to the rest of the country about what democratic socialism means in practice.

You’re doing well on your affordability agenda – rent freeze, the start of childcare expansion – considering the Albany obstacles. I’m hopeful “Tax the Rich” will make more progress next year, since the success of Democratic Socialists of America candidates in this June’s primaries sent a powerful political message to the Legislature’s leaders – shape up, or more incumbent dominoes will fall.

But to do more, you have to do better by New York City public employees. That’s for two reasons.

First, to really implement “sewer socialism” effectively – if we are really going to have better and more efficient public services – you and especially your agency managers need to be listening to your workers. I understand that in some agencies – I’ve heard promising things about the Department of Transportation – a culture of “the sky is the limit” is starting to be cultivated among lower-level managers and planners.

That’s great! (Does that carry over to the people that actually carry out the physical labor of putting plans into effect? You need to make it your business to find out.)

Elsewhere, you need to prod business-as-usual agencies; not just for commissioners themselves to be more ambitious, but to solicit voice and ideas from the ranks – from the people that do the work, that have thought about the problems of service delivery for years and decades. But that solicitation can’t just be a one-way street – an employee suggestion box, as it were.

It needs to be coupled with genuine dialogue about how to make the work, as well as the work product, better.

And that brings me to the second reason to do better by our city workforce. You need to model what employer-worker relations look like under a socialist mayor.

Since we aspire to have many more mayor, governor and president Mamdanis, you have an almost unique opportunity to blaze this trail. After all, YOU are the employer.

Unlike your affordability issues, on these matters YOU have almost unilateral control – no matter what Council Speaker Julie Menin wishes. YOU can remake public sector labor relations.

Or you could send the dismal message that while affordability will be better under a democratic-socialist administration, work itself, and the treatment of workers, won’t be any different than during our last fifty years of neoliberalism.

So, here’s a to-do list for the fall…

Number One with a Bullet: It’s really incumbent on you to fix the most egregious wage rates NOW.

With 20-20 hindsight, you should have come to agreements with the United Federation of Teachers and District Council 37 to hike paraprofessional and emergency medical technician wages back last December. Then, you could have announced the solution of these problems on Jan. 1 and sent a pro-worker signal about how you would address the city-union relationship – as partners, not antagonists.

So, why don’t you fix the para problem AND settle the UFT contract now – a year early? The UFT’s current contract provides its last raise on Sept. 14 and expires 14 months later. We can already see that the next contract round is going to look something like the 4.5 – 4 – 3.5 – 3 – 3 percent that Hochul is giving to state workers.

Tell the UFT you want to settle all money issues this fall and use that opportunity to get UFT president Michael Mulgrew to commit some of that money to front-load para wage increases. Pledge that you and the chancellor will finish bargaining over all UFT’s non-economic demands before the end of 2027 – more or less when the old contract would have expired.

EMTs are part of DC 37, whose contract expires Nov. 6. What a coup it would be for you to have a contract settled by that date, so that DC 37 workers could, for once, get their raises on time!

And, as with paras, EMTs would get their wage rates readjusted in the process. While you’re at it, please establish a new, much higher minimum pay rate for DC 37 workers – currently an utterly shameful $18/hour.

"Affordability” is not just about the rent, but what your salary is.

I’m sure you are thinking that all this would be so out-of-character from the way city-union labor relations have traditionally been handled. Once you abandon those traditions – unjust though they are in so many ways – it will open up a Pandora’s Box of ideas, requests and demands for contractual and procedural changes.

That’s true – and a good thing – to try to fix problems rather than sweep them under the rug. But the longstanding minimalist don’t-reinvent-the-wheel philosophy of your Office of Labor Relations means it will bitterly resist change.

That’s partly your fault Mayor Mamdani.

You flushed out nearly all of Eric Adams’ commissioners, yet you left his OLR commissioner in place. Intentional or not, that signaled that the city’s dysfunctional labor relations policies, crafted to serve anti-worker goals, were just fine.

The good news, though, is that the Dec. 1 retirement of Commissioner Renee Campion gives you a chance to reset your labor policies and start to change the culture at OLR.

Mission number 1A: stop discouraging agencies from talking to workplace union reps. Mission number 1B: actively encourage it.

And while uou’re at it…

Look to fix outsourcing and hiring practices – two more sources of public worker woe.

According to Serve NYC, Afford NYC, a DC 37 rank-and-file caucus, subcontracting of work has grown 6 percent a year since 2010, now costing $24 billion – about 20 percent of the city’s entire budget.

That’s partially due to the city’ dysfunctional hiring system: “slow hiring times and promotions, infrequent civil service exams, and pay disparities between titles. It can take six months between a job interview and a job offer. ... The city loses candidates in that process while agencies are not even staffed to the levels that they are budgeted.”

And since I have your ear, allow me a final word on private sector labor. Your continued support of the Delivery Protection Act may be crucial in forcing Speaker Menin to allow a vote on a bill she obviously opposes.

But Council Member Tiffany Caban has an even more important bill waiting in the wings: the Secure Jobs Act, which would provide just cause job protections – meaning a worker cannot be fired without a valid reason – to every worker in the city, not just those with a union contract.

That would truly be a message to the nation about the prioritization of labor’s needs over those of capital!

Certainly, this is a big agenda Mayor Mamdani, but true democratic socialism isn’t just about making life better for the working class as consumers – affordability. It also needs to empower the working class as workers, and in their workplaces – in both the public and private sectors.