Facing criticism over a recent campaign ad that angered many city workers, Rahm Emanuel said Friday he would not ask employees to take additional unpaid days off if elected mayor.
In an interview with the Chicago News Cooperative, Emanuel said the taxpayer dollars saved by the furlough program were not as great as expected and had “demoralized the workforce.”
“Morale is horrible,” Emanuel said. “I want to end the furlough days … I will say to leaders of labor, I know this is a bone of contention. I’m ready to eliminate that bone of contention, but be a partner in the other changes I also need to do, because if I’m giving up on the furlough days, which I don’t think has achieved what we need to achieve, [then] I need you to be a partner in the other difficult changes we do need to make.”
Emanuel did not say what he would ask union leaders to concede in exchange for no longer asking unionized city workers to take unpaid days off.
Most City Hall workers besides police and firefighters have taken as many as 24 furlough days a year — in effect, a 9 percent pay cut — under the threat of layoffs from retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley. The agreement with labor unions that requires unpaid days off will expire in the middle of the year, less than two months after Daley’s successor will take office.
In a report released Tuesday, the city’s inspector general concluded that the Daley administration’s claims of savings through the furlough program were exaggerated because they failed to take into account the impact on contributions to underfunded employee pension funds.
With many union leaders expressing their displeasure with Emanuel, rival Gery Chico has racked up endorsements from many of the larger public employee unions, including the Fraternal Order of Police, the firefighters’ union and the laborers.
Asked Friday if he would ask for unpaid days off from workers, Chico replied that he would not suggest police and firefighters start taking furlough days, but he added that for “the rest of the city workforce, I would say you keep all tools on the table. You cannot afford, without understanding the full dimensions of the budget problem, I’m going to take this off, I’m going to take that off.”
Similarly, mayoral hopeful Miguel del Valle has said he believes workers would have to continue to take furlough days for at least another year as the city grapples with massive budget deficits.
Emanuel’s announcement of his new position came a week after his campaign debuted a TV ad that some union officials declared offensive. In the ad, the former White House chief of staff states that City Hall “is not an employment agency” and promised an administration where “everybody that works for the city government knows that they’re actually a public servant.â€
Even before the ad began airing, many labor leaders and unionized city workers had viewed the prospects of an Emanuel administration with trepidation. Last month, the CNC reported that the candidate told Chicago Federation of Labor leaders at a closed-door meeting that he favored cutting pensions for current employees as well as new hires.