Why is Gov. Cuomo wasting time talking with the Public Employees Federation?
He vowed to fire 3,500 PEF members if the union nixed a contract deal — and it did just that.
Time to keep his vow.
Let’s be honest: The PEF, which represents some 56,000 state staffers, knew quite well the choice it faced before members voted the deal down last month.
As the governor correctly noted back then, senior PEF members “made a decision that they’d rather see [junior] people laid off” than accept the deal.
It was a cold outcome, worth keeping in mind the next time unionists begin bleating about heartless employers.
Credit to the 66,000-member Civil Service Employees Association, which faced the same choice — on an almost identical contract — and chose the deal over layoffs.
So why should PEF members get a second bite of the apple?
And why should Cuomo put his credibility on the line by even considering such a thing?
Soon after the PEF vote, Cuomo did send out the legally required 21-day layoff notices. PEF employees who got them are slated to be shown the door a week from tomorrow, absent a new agreement — and a new vote backing it.
Cuomo, short-sightedly, agreed to discuss contract “tweaks,” as long as they don’t cost the state money.
Yesterday, he confirmed that “conversations are ongoing” regarding the deal.
It’s no surprise, of course, that the governor would want to avoid the layoffs.
But if he doesn’t go through with his threat, he’ll set a truly bad precedent. Who’ll believe him the next time he draws a line in the sand?
“The members of the union didn’t think I was serious,” Cuomo said. “They thought the administration was bluffing, that there wouldn’t be layoffs. If that’s what they thought, then they were mistaken.”
Great. Now’s the time to prove it.
By the way, that proposed contract — which PEF’s leadership OK’d — is hardly onerous. Yes, it includes a three-year wage freeze and requires members to pay a bit more for health care. But given Albany’s fiscal state — and what the private sector has had to face over the past few years — the deal, if anything, is overly generous.
And yet, the union’s rank-and-file turned it down in a landslide.
Fine. That was their right.
Members who voted to sacrifice their fellows prefer layoffs to any effort to scale back their juicy perks.
There’s no reason why Cuomo shouldn’t give them what they want.
Keep your vow, Gov.
Pull the trigger.