Barely six weeks after his inauguration as mayor, Rahm Emanuel faced his first open dispute Wednesday with a unionized workforce that largely opposed his candidacy.
In a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, labor officials responded testily to Emanuel’s public threat earlier in the day to lay off hundreds of city workers unless their unions accept his demands for unspecified “work rule changes and efficiencies.”
Emanuel said his proposal would save the city $20 million, and its rejection would force him to lay off more than 600 city workers, but labor leaders shot back that the plan was “unacceptable.”
The impasse came as a two-year contract concession agreement with city worker unions was set to expire Thursday. Under the deal, forged by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2009, workers took as many as 24 unpaid days off work each year and gave up overtime pay and wage increases.
In his budget proposal for 2011, Daley had calculated that the deal would cover the entire year, even though the concessions deal expires mid-year. That left Emanuel with what administration aides estimate to be a $30 million shortfall.
Union leaders argue that they have no responsibility to make further concessions to fill a hole created by Daley’s accounting sleight of hand.
“The current city budget deficit … was created by politicians unilaterally imposing added sacrifices in a complete disregard for the collective bargaining process and disrespect for workers’ rights,” according to the statement from Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez and Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago & Cook County Building Trades Council.
They added, “It is unacceptable to assign any cost associated with the expiration of the two-year deal to the current city workforce. There have been absolutely no negotiations between the city and the unions representing the city’s workforce.”
Asked Wednesday morning if the unions faced a deadline to agree to his plan, Emanuel replied, “I’m not going to just sit here and wait. I’ll make certain decisions.”
The mayor did not say when he would lay off workers, nor did he provide details of the measures he would like the unions to agree on, saying only that similar practices are already employed in the private sector.
Emanuel first met Tuesday with Ramirez and Villanova to discuss the expiring union agreement. But labor officials said Wednesday the administration has not yet provided them with a specific list of proposed changes.
“He mentioned some ideas, but didn’t even give them paper to walk away with,” CFL spokesman Nick Kaleba said of the Tuesday afternoon meeting in Emanuel’s office.
Labor leaders say they have hired a budget expert to help them come up with their own proposal for cutting costs. Emanuel said he expected to hear back from the unions within a couple weeks.
“We are ready to move,” Emanuel said. “I want [employee unions] to be a partner, but I won’t stand still and I’ll take the necessary steps, but my door will always remain open and they know my cell phone number
and e-mail in case they have an idea. … They know we are collectively as a city on a deadline and I’m going to operate accordingly.”
Emanuel made his remarks during a news conference on the South Side, where he announced that Walgreens plans to add 600 jobs in Chicago over the next two years.
The standoff with labor was hardly a surprising development, given the city’s dire financial state and Emanuel’s rocky relationship with labor unions during the campaign to succeed Daley.
Most city employee unions either endorsed rival Gery Chico or remained neutral in the Feb. 22 election after Emanuel privately told CFL leaders that he favored cutting pensions for current employees as well as new hires.
Many of the relatively few wards that Emanuel did not win on election day were areas with large populations of city workers, particularly on the far Northwest and far Southwest Sides.