More than 18,000 municipal employees have gone without a raise for close to a year and a half because of a wage freeze imposed by the previous mayor, Dennis Archer, and continued by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick has asserted that due to a $75 million budget shortfall the city government is offering a five-year contract with no raises in the first two years, and a 2 percent raise in each of the other three years.

"Zero percent won’t pay the rent" was one of the most popular chants at the picket line.

"The mayor just wants us to continue taking these low salaries," said Theresa Brown, a seven-year employee with the municipal health department and member of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 457. "It seems like they always want to put the workers on the back burner. They want us to accept working for five years with only a 6 percent increase, and we have already been working for over a year without a raise."

"We just want to be treated fairly," she said.

Following several months of negotiations, at least five of the 18 unions involved have now taken votes approving strike action if an agreement is not reached. In recent months the unions have held several actions at city council meetings to press their demands.

After union officials called for the September 21 action to be held in front of the mayor’s official residence, Kilpatrick invited all city workers to a public "information-sharing" meeting at Cobo Hall, a large convention center in downtown Detroit. The unions then held their action outside the hall, sending some members into the meeting, while keeping up a picket line outside.

In a letter to the mayor, AFSCME Council 25 president Albert Garrett wrote, "We question whether your proposed meeting as described violates the Michigan Public Employees Relations Act by attempting to circumvent AFSCME and meet directly with workers as a collection of individuals on issues which are properly subject to collective bargaining."

At Cobo Hall the mayor started his presentation declaring that if the workers didn’t go along with the contract proposal, the government would "have to" carry out layoffs.

Then, in an effort to divide the union, he asserted that some of the workers with more seniority had been telling him to go ahead and lay off those with less seniority so they could get pay raises. Kilpatrick said joint "labor-management" committees might be able to collaborate to find other "cost-cutting" measures.

After the meeting many of the city workers expressed anger at the mayor’s arrogant posture. Dano Chappell, a welder with 16 years seniority at the city department of public works, stated, "One of the people who spoke reminded the mayor of when city workers took a pay cut some years back and asked ‘why don’t you take a 10 percent pay cut?’ Kwame [Kilpatrick] said, ‘I’m not taking a pay cut.’ The way I see it, he’s forcing the city employees into taking economic sanctions. The unions are always making concessions. It’s about time the mayor made some concessions."  
 
 
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