DETROIT
City workers defeat 'merit pay'
By
Workers World Detroit bureau
Just three weeks after Detroit's teachers defeated "merit"
pay in an eight-day strike, hundreds of Detroit city workers
mobilized to denounce "merit pay based on performance
evaluation" at a Sept. 21 City Council public hearing. The day
after the hearing, Mayor Dennis Archer withdrew his proposal
rather than see it voted down in defeat.
The issue was a complicated new formula for evaluating
non-union city workers every year. Annual step pay increases
would be based on a supervisor's decision.
What was of greatest concern to the dozens of speakers, both
from union and non-union jobs, was the lack of objectivity in
the system. Detroit Ombudsman John R. Eddings, who had opposed
the City Council in a series of letters before the hearings,
pointed out that "the widespread problem of supervisor bias ...
given that racism, sexism and other biases are nearly universal
management problems."
Union leaders pointed out that the mayor had been pressuring
the various bargaining units to accept a similar program.
AFSCME Council 25 leader Bill Harper denounced the attempt to
build a phony "merit" system into base pay. His units had
accepted a 1-percent cash bonus incentive at the end of the
current three-year contract based on a simple pass-fail
evaluation.
Labor Relations Chief Roger Cheek had tried to confuse the
City Council by implying that AFSCME and other unions had
accepted the broader performance evaluation/merit pay program.
They had not.
UAW Local 2334 President David Sole, representing chemists
at the Water and Health Departments, testified. He said his
union is currently in contract talks with the city and is under
tremendous pressure to accept merit pay or get no serious
raise.
Sole asked the City Council to investigate where a series of
proposals pushed by the mayor were coming from. "Merit pay,
defined-contribution pension plans, privatization, an end to
affirmative action and school vouchers are all being heavily
promoted in Michigan. Is it an accident that they are all part
of the program of the right-wing think tanks and banks that
finance them?
"They operate with an agenda for Detroit just as the
International Monetary Fund dictates economic policy to poor
countries who are in debt to the banks."
On the morning of Sept. 22, just before the City Council was
scheduled to vote on the merit pay "Step Code G," the mayor's
office withdrew it from the table.
It is expected that Mayor Archer will do some lobbying and
bring the proposal back at a later date. Union leaders who
still face merit pay at the bargaining table expressed
confidence that they would have an easier time refusing to
submit to it now that a struggle had beaten it back at City
Council.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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