City Gov’t Must Use The Federal Safety Net

LAST week, Mayor de Blasio brought up the F-word: furloughs. Without massive federal aid, he warned, Gotham will have to “furlough and layoff . . . the exact people who have been the heroes in this crisis,” namely, “the first responders, the health-care workers.” Hizzoner is making a threat here. But a responsible mayor and council would be using furloughs as a tool: transfer people who aren’t doing immediately essential work to the expanded federal safety net, starting, yes, with the Department of Education.

New York City employs nearly 335,000 people — and plans only 1,000 job cuts over the next six weeks. Even as the city asks for more federal aid, it isn’t using the federal aid Congress already provided through the CARES Act: expanded unemployment benefits that allow any single breadwinner who earns the average household income to have all of his or her income replaced for nine months.

This system has flaws, including swamped state unemployment systems. But it’s also a lifeline to millions of retailers, restaurants, arts institutions, museums and so forth, who can at least know, as they lay off staff temporarily, that their workers are protected.

Our city government, too, has tens of thousands of workers, at least, who can’t do their job in a lockdown. The Department of Education, with 149,000 workers, makes up nearly half that workforce.

These workers do critical tasks in normal times — but can’t do them now. The DOE has nearly

1,500 school-lunch workers, for example, who earn well below the median wage, about $35,000 to

$40,000 a year. Save for a skeleton crew preparing to-go meals for parents to pick up, furlough them; the city could help individual workers as they apply for unemployment insurance and pledge not to let anyone lose a paycheck. The city could also continue paying health benefits.

The city has 5,300 school-safety agents making less than $50,000 a year. Absurdly, de Blasio wants them to enforce social distancing, putting themselves at risk. Save for officers needed to secure meal-pickup sites, transfer them temporarily, too, to the federal safety net.

Nearly 2,000 educational “community assistants,” who also make well below the median income? 11,000 paraprofessionals, who work with teachers and students, and who likewise make well below median income? With summer school canceled and online classes winding down, the city could transfer most to the federal safety net with no financial harm to workers.

The city shows no compunction about laying off some education workers: bus drivers, because they work for private contractors, are already on furlough.

The city’s nearly 130,000 teachers and educational supervisors of course, make well above median wage, and so would lose income in any furlough: about $30,000 a year. Perversely, though, the teachers’ contract, which mandates that junior teachers suffer furloughs before senior ones, works in favor of nearcomplete income replacement, as junior teachers earn less.

This goes for the rest of the city’s workforce: Does the Taxi and Limousine Commission need 230 inspectors when the taxi and limousine business has fallen by 80 percent? 125 day-care inspectors, when day cares are shut? 250 foodsafety inspectors, when restaurants are closed? The city simply can’t spend the $30.3 billion it expected

‘ The city should be taking advantage of a bill.’ federal rescue that can cut its labor

to spend on labor for the fiscal year that started July 1. It should be taking advantage of a federal rescue that can cut this bill.

This also buys time — time to go through the thousands of administrative jobs the mayor has added in six years. And it buys negotiation power: Unions can agree to an across-the-board wage freeze to bring back jobs.

It also buys more flexibility in the fall and next year, when the rest of the nation may have moved on. New York is acutely vulnerable here, due to its density. Will residents and workers return? Will real-estate values plummet?

If we don’t use the extra federal safety net when it’s there, we will face mass-scale layoffs of essential workers next year — and with no extra federal unemployment insurance to offer them.

No elected city official will speak publicly about this idea now, because it sounds mean. But what’s

really mean is being quiet now, then having overcrowded classrooms and long waits for school lunches a year from now because the money has run out for students and for future laid-off workers.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.