Unions Prepare to Sell Out

Not ours. Not yet:

• Union leaders are closing in on an agreement with Mayor Rahm Emanuel that could pave the way for increased health care premiums for more than 10,000 city tradespeople, a powerful labor leader disclosed Tuesday.
  
  Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez refused to say how much more employees would pay, or if labor would demand a no-layoff/no privatization guarantee in return along with a continuation of the prevailing wage paid in private industry.
  
  He would say only that negotiations “concentrating on health care” are “getting productive” and he hopes to finalize an agreement “sooner rather than later.”

The paper quotes Rahm's "won't someone think of the taxpayer mantra again:

• “As we negotiate new contracts, I expect … to see savings in wages and benefits, health care and other places,” Emanuel said then. “And I expect them to be a partner in trying to find the savings.”

- forgetting that city workers are taxpayers, too.

And we don't know what Ferguson was promised to be Rahm's hatchet man, but it must have been extensive:

• Ferguson has been highly critical of Daley’s decade-long commitment to pay a prevailing wage to members of the building trades — a wage no other major city pays.
  
  The inspector general has urged Emanuel to shorten future contracts and include a “mandatory mid-term re-opener” triggered by a “fiscal emergency” or whenever the city’s operating revenues drop below a “certain negotiated percentage.”

Which we will guarantee, here and now, will occur every single year from here onward.