LRB

There is a lot of influence from city council. In regard to higher wages, for example, we have one hospital that decided to pay $15 an hour to their employees after a lot of pressure came from student groups and from DSA. But none of the city council members would take the lead or the charge on $15 an hour.

When we’re negotiating with some of these large institutions that want to receive tax abatements — even though I don’t believe they should be receiving texts abatements, because they’re already profitable — a lot of council members do not negotiate living wages or benefits for the workers employed in those institutions, including subcontractors. That’s something we could negotiate directly from city council. We could say, “You want an abatement, you want something from our residents? Then you need to provide good wages, not just to your direct employees but also to those that are cleaning and maintaining your building.”

We’ve had plenty of expansion in our city that’s been made possible with public money. So we have Nationwide Arena, for example, a big concert venue. And we had workers there trying to form a union with IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees). The board of the company that employed them hired an anti-union firm, and they busted the union campaign. All we heard from city council was one council member writing a letter asking for the union-busting to stop. But at no point did any of the other council members step up and say, this is publicly funded, the taxpayers are paying into this, and the union-busting is unacceptable and we’re going to hold you accountable.

We had the same thing happen with a recent Hilton expansion. The Hilton was going to receive a loan from the city in order to expand, and there was a talk about a neutrality agreement. City council could’ve said, “We’re not going to lend you the money to do this expansion if you’re not going to pay $15 an hour and provide neutrality for unions to organize the hotel workers and convention workers.” Ultimately the board overseeing it voted no on a neutrality agreement, and there was no pushback from council.