Richard J. Brickwedde, running for Onondaga County Comptroller

 

1. A Project labor agreement is a comprehensive pre-hire collective bargaining agreement that establishes standardized conditions and wages for all contractors and subcontractors on a PLA covered project. PLAs offer:

Stable labor costs so you can bid without guessing.
Reliable supply of local skilled workers for the project duration.
Apprenticeship trained and certified workers.
A no-strike, no lockout commitment.
Binding procedures to settle disputes, so no work stoppages.
Management flexibility to meet special project needs.

Do you support Project Labor Agreements? If not, explain why.

ANSWER: Yes

2. Private school vouchers and other schemes like education tax credits for K-12 private school expenses undermine public education by taking scarce public funds away from public schools that are open to the public and shifting them to private schools.
The AFL-CIO strongly supports legislation that would strengthen public education by helping states and local school districts reduce their class sizes and finance school repair, construction, and modernization projects with protection for prevailing community wages. A growing number of public schools all across the country are being forced to set up classrooms in trailers, hallways, and closets in order to accommodate their rapidly rising enrollments. One-third of all public schools also need extensive repair or replacement.

What is your view of proposals to provide for private school vouchers and/or charter schools?

ANSWER: The charter school movement undercuts public education. We need to work with our schools, teachers, parents, administrators to provide a safe and creative learning environment for all students. Having a physically attractive and tehnologically up to date environment is important to a good learning environment.

What would you do to improve the state of disrepair many of our public schools are currently experiencing?

ANSWER: Administrators need to enforce discipline. That discipline should not put disruptive students on the street, but should put them in differently structured programs. This should go hand in hand with creating a safe environment in the schools. The City of Syracuse is making a major investment in the physical rehabilitation of its schools. That is a first step. Discipline needs to be maintained because little learning can take place in a disruptive environment. Young teachers are most often given classes with the toughest and the youngest students. Frequently, calls are made to put the most experienced teachers in those most demanding classes. What should be done is the more experienced teachers should work as mentors with those young teachers to give guidance. Teachers can have a burn out problem and creative ways need to be found to use their experience and temper it with workload, discipline and size of class.

3. Ninety-four percent of workers say firing an employee for supporting union representation is an “unacceptable action” and 80 percent say they are aware that such actions are against the law. Nevertheless, employers illegally fire union supports in 31 percent of organizing campaigns and many use other tactics to thwart workers’ efforts to form unions.
A recent report by Human Rights Watch shows that existing laws are too lax and unenforced to prevent employer attacks on workers’ rights. For instance, while employers can prevent unions from contacting workers at their work places to discuss the advantages of union membership, they are free to deluge workers with anti-union messages.

Do you believe employers should be held accountable for their anti-union activities?

ANSWER: Yes.

If yes, what actions should be taken against companies that violate workers’ rights to organize?

ANSWER: The Unions probably have better suggestions than I could
make as to how to level the playing field. Companies should not be able to prevent unions from contacting employees, and if companies do contact employees with regard to union matters (in the broadest sense), unions should be given equal and similar access. Administrative, civil and criminal sanctions should be available from the NLRB, Human Rights Commissions and comparable state agencies and laws to enforce workers rights. Where public bodies or officials refuse to act, after appropriate notice, unions or employees should be able to bring private attorney general actions with costs and attorney's fees recoverable if the suits are successful.

How could labor laws be improved to guarantee workers’ right to organize?

ANSWER: Clearly, from human rights commissions to Federal and State Labor regulatory agencies, employee protection programs have been understaffed and backlogs have grown longer. Step number one should be to fully fund those agencies charged with the responsiblity for protecting workers' rights. Step number 2 is to put appropriate staff into those agencies; Step number 3 is to look at legislative changes, about which you are probably more aware than I am, that will fill loopholes that exist.

4. While the economy has been growing, this growth has been accompanied by a sluggish job market that seems to provide too few with a rising standard of living or greater economic security. Economists have attributed this unique predicament to several factors, including corporate downsizing, global competition, the introduction of labor saving technologies, and a pattern of increasingly large rewards to more highly skilled employees. Indeed, a recent study found that most Americans today are worse off than they were before the 1989-1991 recession.
Many northeast communities have lured businesses or encouraged them to stay through tax incentives. However, these incentives have not prevented those companies from downsizing the jobs of those very same taxpayers who offered the tax breaks in the first place.

Should companies be able to accept such tax breaks only to downsize thereafter?

ANSWER: No, but see caveat below.

How would you correct this apparent inequity?

ANSWER: If companies accept incentives to come here, stay here or expand here, they should be held to the terms of their agreement.
If they break those agreements, they should be held accountable. The
Comptroller, to the extent County benefits are involved, is in a position to shed light on abuses. Sometimes, however, circumstances change and we need to be careful that when it appears the change was beyond the control or anticipation of a company, and that they have not abused their use of the incentives, that we don't kill off more jobs in holding them accountable.

5. An honest day’s work should be rewarded with an honest day’s pay. That’s what a “Living Wage” is all about. Living wage ordinances have been enacted in 80 localities across the nation and have been passed in Rochester, Buffalo and New York City.
A living wage ordinance requires employers to pay wages that are above federal or state minimum wage levels. Only a specific set of workers are covered by living wage ordinances, usually those employed by businesses that have a contract with a city or county government or those who receive economic development subsidies from the locality. The rationale behind the ordinances is that city and county governments should not contract with or subsidize employers who pay poverty-level wages.
The living wage level is usually the wage a full-time worker would need to earn to support a family above the federal poverty line, ranging from 100% to 130% of the poverty measurement. The wage rates specified by living wage ordinances range from a low of $6.25 in Milwaukee to a high of $10.75 in San Jose ( A wage of $8.96 an hour with health benefits is recommended for Syracuse, NY.).
Living wage ordinances provide much needed raises for low-income workers. Wages for the bottom 10% of wage earners fell by 9.3% between 1979 and 1999. The number of jobs where wages were below what a worker would need to support a family of four above the poverty line also grew between 1979 and 1999. In 1999, 26.8% of the workforce earned poverty-level wages, an increase from 23.7% in 1979.

Can you provide a good reason why you would not support legislation that requires a living wage for workers? Please include your position on a living wage for Syracuse-area workers.

ANSWER: I support a living wage for the County similar to the living wage legislation adopted by the City of Syracuse. Even though the minimum wage was just raised for the next several years at the federal level, with a new president, and hopefully greater majorities in Congress after next year, we can increase the minimum wages paid even more. Henry Ford is known not just for introducing the assembly line. He is known for having increased the wages for his employees beyond the market at the time so they could afford to buy his vehicles. American society, and George W. Bush and his minions seems to have forgotten this lesson with their benefit the rich, stick it to the poor and middle class philosophy.

6. “Down-waging” has become a standard practice by highly profitable companies who replace full-time workers with part-timers, temps or sub-contract out for lower wages and poorer benefits. Between 1980 and 1995, 42-million jobs were lost in the United States. Each year, there are 50 percent more people laid off than are victims of crime, which raises the question of which is the greater social ill.
Reduced wages and benefits negatively impacts on families’ ability to afford adequate health care. Forty-three million Americans do not have health insurance and another million lose it each month.

And, while many parents believe college costs will be the biggest expense they face for their children, in fact many will spend more in a year on quality child care than on public college tuition, according to a new Children's Defense Fund (CDF) report.

The AFL-CIO supports guaranteed high-quality child-care, health care, job education and training.

What steps can elected officials take to ensure that these benefits are available to all Americans?

ANSWER: I fully support the AFL-CIO in this area. Years ago, I knew Marian Wright Edelman (and I worked with her husband on Robert F. Kennedy's Senate staff, albeit in the Syracuse office). At the county level, we can insure that quality child care is available for all county employees. We can also help bring visability to private employers who make similar facilities available to their employees. Hopefully, the change in state administrations will lead to greater policing and training of state regulatory employees who have abused their powers.

7. Those who advocate the privatization of government services seek a significant reduction in the government’s role in society. But, market-oriented policies cannot be relied on, by themselves, to meet our citizens needs.
Studies conducted by Cornell University found that the claims by privatization ideologues, are “quite groundless” and the empirical research supporting such claims are “so flawed as to be useless as a policy guide.”
Instead, privatization of government services has been shown to
•diminish the access to public services
•reduce employee morale, productivity and turnover
•exploit part-time workers through low wages and benefits
•increase discrimination against minorities
•cause the loss of government sovereignty
•weakens constitutional rights (e.g., whistle blowing, ethical conduct)
•reduce quality of services
•increase corruption, bribery and kick-backs
•lose accountability for public values and services.

Do you support privatizing public services? Please explain your answer.

ANSWER: For the reasons stated above I do not support the privatizing of public services. For those of use who sometimes deal with public authorities, we can see how the private agendas and lack of accountablity affect service and cost to the public. I distinguish those projects of an emergency nature such as extraordinary weather events that may require contracting out of cleanup or such matters as major road construction where the eqipment or skill level in the private sector can not be matched by governments too small to have either the appropriate equipment or skills to perform such projects.

8. As an elected official, how would you ensure that the voice of labor and community-based agencies are recognized on decision-making bodies such as the Industrial Development Authority?

ANSWER: The County Comptroller's authority is limited to keeping the books and performing audits. In the scope of the audits we can look at the management issues that arise from decision making by IDAs as well as other authorities that are subject to County oversight at some level. Public Officials always have a bully pulpit. Those who know me know that in years past, I have not hesitated to go public when I think something needs attention.

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Greater Syracuse Labor Council Questionnaire