NYC Voters Oppose More Worker Health, Pension Costs, Quinnipiac Poll Says
New York City voters oppose forcing public employees to pay more for health benefits and pensions, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg has advocated to reduce expenses, a Quinnipiac University poll said.
Voters rejected workers contributing more to their pensions by 49 percent to 38 percent, and they opposed higher costs for health care by 58 percent to 32 percent, the survey showed.
The city’s five-year financial plan, which includes a balanced $66 billion budget for the 2012 fiscal year that began July 1, predicts deficits approaching $5 billion during each of the next three years, prompting the mayor to call for cost cuts.
“If Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to emulate Governor Andrew Cuomo in squeezing government employees, he’s got a heavy lift,” Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Connecticut, said in a statement today.
Governor Cuomo negotiated agreements with leaders of the Public Employees Federation and the Civil Service Employees Association, the state’s two largest public worker unions, that increase the retirement age for new employees to 65 from 62 and boost worker contributions to their pension and health plans.
Cuomo said that would save $93 billion during the next 30 years. Union members will vote on the proposals next month.
Performance Over Seniority
New York City voters agreed with the mayor by 77 percent to 16 percent that job performance, not seniority, should determine who gets fired first during budget cuts. They also backed his push to make 65 the minimum age for non-uniformed workers to collect pensions, 51 percent to 44 percent.
Seventy-three percent of those polled said city workers’ benefits and pay are “about right” or “too low.” The city won’t increase either without union concessions, the mayor told the Financial Control Board on July 25.
“The only way we will be able to afford raises for city workers in the future is if we can find some savings in our pension and health-care costs,” Bloomberg said. “That’s not a negotiating stance. It is reality.”
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,234 registered voters by telephone from July 19 to 25, it said. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
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