Dear Friend,
City workers make the Big Apple work day in and day out, yet they have been mistreated and disrespected by Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council.
When I am elected mayor, I will negotiate deserved raises for our city employees, teachers, firefighters, and cops. It can't be all that they want, but it sure won't be zeros. And I will not raise taxes to pay for it. I'll pay for it by recovering monies squandered by the Bloomberg Administration, under the closed eyes of former Comptroller William Thompson who, in fact, is just as responsible for the CityTime fiasco as the Mayor.
The municipal workforce of the City of New York is the backbone of safety and security for all. They deserve to be treated better.
NY1: "City's Largest Public Employee Union Endorses Liu For Mayor" - 5/29/2013
EXCERPT - "Moving forward, there is going to be negotiations. It's probably not going to be the entire amount of the retroactivity, but it's not going to be zero either," Liu said. "And the reason why it can't be zero is because that would not be fair to the city worker."
amNY: "To avoid Detroit's fate, Bloomberg warns of labor costs" - 8/6/2013
EXCERPTS - City Comptroller John Liu slammed Bloomberg's inability to negotiate new contracts as a "dine-and-dash." "Outstanding contracts for a 300,000-member workforce and failing to deliver on promised retroactive pay raises -- which Mayor Bloomberg himself set a precedent of delivering on during his first two terms -- is simply negligent," Liu said in a statement.
NEW YORK OBSERVER: "John Liu Issues Feisty Response to Bloomberg's Economy Speech" - 8/6/2013
EXCERPTS - "An 'unprecedented opportunity'?" Mr. Liu asked of Mr. Bloomberg's suggestion the next mayor use labor negotiations to keep pension and healthcare costs down. "That's a rather diplomatic way to describe what hundreds of thousands of workers would actually call 'dine-and-dash." Snarking on Mr. Bloomberg's previous claim that the city was "lucky" for the infamous CityTime scandal due to the resulting financial settlement, Mr. Liu added, "Calling this an 'unprecedented opportunity' would be the same as saying the city was somehow 'lucky' to be defrauded by CityTime. Oh wait, he already did say that.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: "Controller John Liu and Mayor Bloomberg publicly spar over retroactive pay raises for 200,000 teachers" - 7/24/2012
EXCERPTS - Long-running tensions between Mayor Bloomberg and Controller John Liu briefly spilled into public Monday as the two were seen arguing over city finances.
Bloomberg then stomped the idea that workers would get raises for past work. "There's no conceivable way this city can go and pay retroactively for work that's already been done," he said.
The two men — seated next to each other at the annual meeting of the budget oversight board — continued to argue quietly while other board members spoke.
After, Liu confirmed that the fight was about the raises. "There is a financial risk that probably the next administration will have to deal with given that this administration refuses to deal with it," Liu said.
WCBS: "John Liu Says In Radio Interview That He Did Work In A Sweatshop" - 6/24/2013
EXCERPTS - The next mayor will inherit a unionized workforce with mostly expired contracts. "It is probably one of the biggest failures of the Bloomberg administration to go four years without resolving any of these contracts. Any halfway decent manager would resolve labor contracts and personnel costs," Liu said. "Going forward, there is going to have to be serious negotiations with the union leadership and at the end of the day, I don't think that the entire amount of the retroactive raises that have been talked about will be possible. But I also don't believe that it will be zero. At some point, people have to recognize that our municipal workforce probably is at its lowest point in terms of morale for a very, very long time. It's just been a huge climate of disrespect. What I believe is that we will find some money that is already inherent within the budget, some money that will be used to pay for some of the raises without having to increase tax rates."
WABC: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council agree on $70 billion budget" - 6/24/2013
EXCERPT - New York City Comptroller John Liu, another Democratic mayoral hopeful, blasted the mayor for not putting money away in anticipation of future labor deals. "On his way out the door, Mayor Bloomberg shows us with this budget agreement that he has left the biggest question - expired labor contracts - for another mayor and another day," Liu said in a statement.
LABOR PRESS: "Liu: Bloomberg Abdicated Responsibility with Labor Contracts" - 5/3/2013
EXCERPTS - "The reality of the budget situation is that the Mayor is leaving the taxpayers of New York City deep in the red with personnel costs that should have been addressed a long time ago. But we now have a situation with hundreds of thousands of city employees working without current contracts. That should have never been allowed to happen," said Liu. Liu noted that the next mayor would have to work closely with the unions to figure out solutions regarding retroactive pay, but there's still time for Mr. Bloomberg to come up with a solution.
CRAIN'S NEW YORK BUSINESS: "Mayor unveils no-pain, no-gain budget" - 1/29/2013
EXCERPT - "This budget illustrates the mayor's continuous refusal to negotiate contracts with our city's workforce, which he is leaving for the next administration," said city Comptroller John Liu, a close ally of organized labor and an undeclared mayoral candidate.
CAPITAL NEW YORK: "Bloomberg says there's still no way he (or the Council) will do retroactive pay" - 12/28/2012
EXCERPT - Comptroller John Liu has contended that Bloomberg might be putting the next administration in a hole by not dealing with retroactive pay.