After weeks of working behind the scenes, Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board president, has lined up bipartisan support for most of her proposed 2012 budget, observers say, including a raft of targeted tax and fee increases.
But on Thursday, a day before county commissioners were scheduled to vote on the $2.9 billion spending plan — Preckwinkle’s second budget since she took office last December — one key question remained: Would unions accept unpaid days off in exchange for fewer layoffs?
In late February, Preckwinkle wrangled a last-minute agreement with some union leaders that required many employees to take 10 unpaid days off to save an estimated 550 jobs.
Not all of the unions went along, however, so some employees have been exempt from the furlough days. That could make it more difficult to reach an agreement on givebacks this time, if the unions that conceded in February insist that the pain be shared by all county employees.
Adding to the pressure is Preckwinkle’s pledge to pass a budget before the start of the fiscal year, on Dec. 1.
To save about 450 of the 1,000 jobs she has said need to be cut, Preckwinkle is calling on most of the county’s 23,300 workers to take eight unpaid days off, including six county holidays — among them, Christmas and Thanksgiving — for which workers are currently paid. If no agreement is reached by the time the budget is passed, Preckwinkle’s plans call for laying off the 1,000 or so employees.
At a news conference on Thursday, Preckwinkle said discussions were continuing. “I can’t predict what’s going to happen this time,” she said.
In fact, it was unclear whether the proposal for unpaid days off would be accepted by any of the 104 bargaining units that represent county employees. Earlier this week, representatives of two of the largest unions expressed doubts that an agreement could be reached soon.
Kurt Summers, Preckwinkle’s chief of staff, characterized the unions’ reaction to the proposal for unpaid days off as “disconcerting at best.”
“We’re creating opportunities for shared sacrifice to save jobs,” Summers said, “and the response has not been favorable, which indicates that folks would rather keep their current compensation and benefits than save jobs of their colleagues.”
Summers said the administration had also raised the possibility of eliminating step increases — raises that accrue with tenure — as an alternative to unpaid days.
Anders Lindall, the spokesman for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 5,000 county employees, said: “The president’s office has had no such discussions with our union. If they did, we’d tell them that a pay cut is a pay cut no matter how you dress it up.”
John Daley, chairman of the County Board’s finance committee, has said he wants a budget passed on Friday. But Adam Rosen, a spokesman for Local 73 of the Service Employees International Union, said he doubted that “anything would move that quickly.” Local 73 represents about 4,000 county employees, including some who work in the health system, courthouses and correctional facilities.
“The 2012 budget doesn’t need to be passed until the end of February,” Rosen said. “They can wait until the last minute.”
But Summers said that he would be surprised if the vote on the budget was postponed beyond Friday and that Preckwinkle was committed to having a budget in place by Dec. 1.
Rosen said his union was scheduled to go back to the bargaining table with the county on Dec. 2 to continue negotiations on a contract, which means that discussions about unpaid days off would probably not take place before then.
Lindall went further, saying there had been no serious talks since Preckwinkle sent a letter to unions in October demanding the eight unpaid days.
“There’s never been any negotiations,” Lindall said. “They sent us a letter a few weeks ago, and that was a nonstarter, and that was the end of it.”
In the letter, Kent S. Ray, the county’s director of labor relations, informed unions that the county was contemplating several cost-savings steps in addition to asking for the unpaid days, including the elimination of floating holidays, personal days, paid lunch hours and breaks. The county would also seek to extend the work day and reduce sick time and vacation accruals.
The standoff is a departure for Preckwinkle, who as a Chicago alderman for 19 years was seen as a friend of labor, sponsoring living-wage ordinances, among other measures. Unions donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaign for County Board president, despite her support for the repeal of the 1-cent sales tax increase sponsored by her predecessor, Todd Stroger.
The unions now argue that if the county had kept the higher sales tax, instead of rolling it back, the county’s fiscal problems would be solved.
Scott Castro, Preckwinkle’s political director, said that despite the current stalemate, Preckwinkle was still on good terms with the unions. “Nobody has called to tell me they are disappointed,” Castro said. “Nobody has called to ask for their money back.”
Ken Snyder, who advised Preckwinkle during her campaign, said she never claimed she could make everybody happy.
“What she promised labor in exchange for their support is a guarantee that they’ll be heard, a guarantee that they’ll be communicated with, that they won’t be blindsided,” Snyder said. “I think she’s kept that promise by being very clear and upfront about the need to right-size the county work force.”
Lindall, the Council 31 spokesman, disagreed. He said that the letter calling for givebacks arrived just days after union members had ratified a new contract with the county.
During those contract negotiations, he said, “the president made zero mention of these demands.”
“We were absolutely blindsided, shocked by this type of letter,” Lindall said. “It was clearly not serious.”