Detroit union leaders call bankruptcy filing premature, say they were trying to negotiate
Detroit Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr / Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press
Leaders of Detroit’s unions blasted emergency manager Kevyn Orr today for the city’s bankruptcy filing, saying it was a premature move when they’d been trying to negotiate in good faith to help pull Detroit out of its staggering financial hole.
Still, they said, Detroit’s workers will continue with business as usual as the events unfold.
Dan McNamara, president of IAFF Local 344 of the Detroit Fire Fighters Association, said the city’s firefighters will continue to protect and serve during this difficult time. “You can count on us,” he said.
Representatives of the association and police officers will meet Friday morning to discuss the situation, McNamara said. They’re working with other Detroit employees to form a coalition to address the city’s financial crisis.
“From the beginning, we have attempted to participate in discussions and offer a restructuring plan,” McNamara said. “It is a shame that now we will have to be in front of a bankruptcy judge when all along we have been expecting to have meaningful meetings with emergency manager Kevyn Orr. These meetings never occurred.”
Ed McNeil, a special assistant to the president of the city’s largest union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25, called the filing premature. He said he doubts the city will have an easy time proving its eligibility for bankruptcy.
“They have not done their due diligence,” he said. “They’re doing whatever they want to do because they think they can.”
During negotiations, McNeil said, “we’ve asked them for information, and they’ve never given it to us.”
Carl Anderson, president of Local 488 of the UWUA (Utility Workers Union of America), said there was no talk of work stoppages, and he’d remind his approximately 50 members by e-mail to continue performing their jobs as usual. He said many city employees are trying to decide whether to retire.
“It’s quite a shock,” he said of the speed of Orr’s bankruptcy filing. “I thought it would not be until the first of the year once (Orr) talked to everybody and got everything in order. I thought it would take more time to get all the concessions.”
Anderson said his union is one of the few to have a contract with the city — good until 2018. It affords a sense of security, and members feel much is safe except for changes to health benefits and pension cuts under restructuring proposals.
But as emergency manager, Orr has the authority to throw out union contracts.
Metro Detroit AFL-CIO President Chris Michalakis and Michigan State AFL-CIO President Karla Swiftsaid in a joint statement that the filing shows negotiations were a sham.
“Today’s action can be taken as confirmation that Kevyn Orr was hired, secretly and ahead of a declared financial emergency, because he is a bankruptcy expert,” the statement said. “Every step of the way, the citizens of Detroit were told that they had to give up their right to democratic representation in order to avoid bankruptcy. Now that this filing has come anyway, it is clear that either state control has failed or that Gov. Snyder and his emergency manager appointee were not honest about their intentions in the first place.”
Related coverage
■ Editorial: How Detroit came to betray its retirees
■ Full coverage: Detroit’s financial crisis
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