Top state labor leaders privately predict that Gov. Cuomo will win his fight for new, cost-cutting, Tier 6 pension reforms.
The leaders also have conceded that strong union opposition to the plan, which could save the state and New York City more than $100 billion over 30 years, is being driven by bitter internal union politics, including a tough national struggle for the presidency of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Tier 6 would be a classification for new employees who would not have the same pension and benefit rules.
Civil Service Employees Association President Danny Donohue, head of the state’s largest public-employee union, is the leading candidate for AFSCME president “and Danny can’t afford to have it seem like he’s been rolled by Cuomo,” said a well-known union leader.
Donohue is battling AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders, a Cleveland native who once held a high-level post in DC 37, New York City’s largest public-employee union.
As a result, “you have Danny’s people in CSEA and Saunders’ people at DC 37 trying to outdo each other in opposing Cuomo’s pension reforms,” said a prominent city labor official.
Also fueling union opposition is a newly emerged insurgent challenge to Kenneth Brynien, president of the Public Employees Federation, the state’s second-largest union. That challenge has stiffened PEF’s resistance to Cuomo’s proposals, the insiders said.
And the new head of the state AFL-CIO, Mario Cilento, is under pressure to show his militancy by opposing Tier 6 so he can retain his position this summer with votes from CSEA, PEF and DC 37.
But behind the scenes, union leaders say they’re willing to make major concessions to Cuomo, including accepting his plan to cap future pension payments and end the practice of inflating overtime earnings to run up final pension awards.
“The first thing that’s needed to get an agreement is to not call it ‘Tier 6’ but to refer to it as ‘pension reform,’ ” said a key union leader.
“And then the emphasis should be on eliminating the stuff that the public sees as outrageous, the abuses, by capping payments and elimination of overtime from the calculations,” the leader continued.
A source close to the Cuomo administration quickly responded, “Calling the reforms something other than ‘Tier 6’ would be fine. Call it whatever you want, as long as the savings are there. We will be reasonably accommodating.’’