I Talked to Mayor Mamdani about "Collaborative Bargaining" with the Municipal Unions
Last week, I was fortunate to be invited to a “Mamdani 100 days” event by WNYC - New York’s public radio station. And when it came time for questions from the audience, I was fortunate to get called on. And here’s my question about changing the way the City bargains with its municipal unions, and Mamdani’s reply:
What is Collaborative Bargaining?
Most of all, it means constant discussions between City agencies and union reps and worker activists about solving workplace problems and improving the provision of city services WITHOUT speed-up. Looking for win-win solutions. It assumes that a socialist Mayor (and his agency heads) don’t act like traditional capitalist employers, always trying to squeeze their workers. It asks those agency heads to mandate continual serious discussion at the level of the workplace. It also relies on union leaderships relaxing their grip on top-down bargaining, and trusting their workplace reps and activists to negotiate about working conditions. It’s about increasing workers’ control over the conditions of their work. For more on workers’ control see here and here and here.
I had previously written about this idea of collaborative bargaining both on this substack and in two articles in The Chief and Jacobin. (I was able to give those two articles to Mamdani as he left the stage.) You’ll see they’re pitched differently.
The substack article is the most substantive explanation, and includes the most information on the long unfortunate history of pattern bargaining, in which all bargaining is between the Office of Labor Relations and union leadership, one union’s wage negotiations set a “pattern” for all that follow, and there is virtually no discussion of working conditions.
The Chief article is pitched to its municipal worker/leadership readership: why moving away from top-down bargaining would be good for them.
The Jacobin article explains the union leaders’ complicity in top-down bargaining and their resistance to agency- and workplace-level bargaining. It argues that rather than wait for unions to demand collaborative bargaining, it’s incumbent on a mayor who calls himself a SOCIALIST to try to implement pilot projects.
What Should We Make of Mamdani’s Response?
In one sense, it’s not unreasonable for Mamdani - who, as a state legislator, had no experience in municipal union bargaining - to say “I need to talk to my team…[that is] tasked with those negotiations” to understand the implications of a 60-second question. On the other hand, if that “team” is the Commissioner of the Office of Labor Relations, that’s worrisome. Renee Campion has worked in OLR since Bloomberg. She got a promotion first to Deputy Commissioner and then Commissioner under de Blasio, stayed put during Adams, and was re-appointed by Mamdani. In other words, she either participated in, or headed, pattern bargaining for the last umpteen years. It’s provided her with a nice predictable career path. Why would we expect her to want to reinvent the wheel? Why would we expect her to give away OLR’s power and control to agencies? Why would we expect her to embrace the prospect of the additional work that would come from having to monitor bargaining at dozens of agencies? This really requires the socialist cadre at City Hall to say, “yes, we want to empower workers and so we WILL reinvent the wheel.” In some ways it’s a litmus test of what they think socialism means since, after all, unlike “tax the rich,” this is a policy matter entirely under City Hall’s control.
What Else Could I Do?
I’ve been trying to catch the ear of someone in the Mamdani administration since December, unsuccessfully. So, actually being able to provide this suggestion to the Mayor himself was more than I could have possibly hoped for. The one additional thing I think I could do is to get NYC DSA to endorse the proposal. Maybe have some of those DSA “electeds” on the City Council keep raising the issue. So, I’ll try to work that angle. But if anyone out there has other ideas, I’m all ears.
If it's a sincere "I haven't yet talked about this with the relevant people" and not just an artful dodge, I'm disappointed that, as you framed it in your question, a socialist mayor doesn't have a well-formulated stance on how he wants to approach bargaining with the municipal unions/how he wants to direct OLR to handle it. (Although I guess I have the same disappointment if it IS an artful dodge.)
The mayor's brief reply to your question, that the purpose of Labor Relations is to negotiate wages and health care and things of that nature doesn’t speak to the essence of what you're seeking, which is an answer about the basic way Labor Relations negotiations are conducted.
You’re looking for a paradigm shift in the framework of how labor relations is conducted.
From my point of view, Union leaders and union members can be seen as different groups. A union leader has to sell the contract to the members at contract time. The members are seen basically as another interest group by the leaders in my opinion. So, it's not really taking the members’ views and opinions out there into the sphere of collective bargaining. It's finding an acceptable package for the employer and then selling it to the members.
Once that's done, the contract is relied upon for the term of the contract, but then shit happens and crises occur and problems come up, which often cannot really be solved in the framework of the contract.
So that's where your question comes in. It’s about worker driven creative solutions to problems that come up in the employer employee relationship. Without claiming to answer the question I do think your idea of a DSA resolution is an excellent one.