HARTNETT
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CSEA HISTORY PROJECT
TOM HARTNETT INTERVIEW
December 18, 2002
2.
MR. MADARASZ: Any remembrances you're
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ready to tell us about and then I'11 follow with
some questions.
MR. HARTNETT: Okay. My name's Tom
Hartnett and I'm an attorney here in town with
the Law Firm of Meyers, Suozzi, English & Klein,
but I spent probably about 14 years, I believe,
in the public service if you will came; came to
Albany as a negotiator. I've worked for AT&T in
New York City, had just graduated from law
school and I'd come up to negotiate labor
contracts and came up in the final year of Hugh
Carey's tenure and went to the Governor's Office
of Employee Relations as an assistant director.
And just to continue on the history
piece, I was in the Governor's Office of
Employee Relations for about two years and they
made me the deputy director which put me in
charge of kind of all the negotiations, and then
a year later they made me the director, so I was
in charge of negotiations with all the unions in
the state, particularly CSEA.
But at that time I think we had ten
bargaining units: University professors, the
Professional Unit. Actually I was there when
the -- not as director but prior to being
director when the Professional Unit was with
CSEA and then when they broke off into a
separate unit, and the Correction Officers and
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whatever.
But CSEA was the major and prime
consideration in our negotiations in those
times, so I stayed at the Governor's Office of
Employee Relations until 1985 at which point the
Governor nominated me for Labor Commissioner and
I was appointed Labor Commissioner in '85 after
Senate confirmation and CSEA happily testified
on my behalf at my Senate confirmation hearing.
And then I started to relate to CSEA
in a whole different way as Labor Commissioner,
primarily in the health and safety area because
in New York State the -- we have within the
Labor Department a group called the PESH or
Public Employee Safety Program and we enforce
all the public sector health and safety
provisions, so I went from negotiating with CSEA
and working with them to having them come and
lobby me and my department for greater health
and safety protections.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: And then I left
Government in 200...I'm sorry, in 1992. I was
up in the Labor Department for about seven years
and then I went out and joined the law firm that
I'm with now and in that capacity had an
Opportunity to do some work with CSEA, so I like
to think that I've seen CSEA in a lot of
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different and varied lights.
MR. MADARASZ: All right. Let's go
back to the beginning then of your first
association with CSEA and what was it like? who
did you meet with, what was your impression of
CSEA then, and what was the feelings across the
table?
MR. HARTNETT: Well, when I first came
up to Albany I was in the -- I was an assistant
director in the Governor's office of Employee
Relations. I was given what I -- what was
considered then the toughest unit to deal with
which was the Institutional Services Unit, the
Isu, and they were primarily direct care health
care workers within the office of Mental Health
and Mental Retardation, so I dealt a lot with
negotiating with Bob Giles, who has since left
CSEA.
Bill McGowan was the president at the
time. I remember once going to a meeting at
Central Islip and the meeting was going along
pretty well until this young, kind of firebrand
of a chapter president came in by the name of
Danny Donohue who totally disrupted the meeting
and caused us enormous grief and as we were
leaving we all said, who the hell was that guy?
(Laughter.)
MR. HARTNETT: And I actually got to
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know Danny from that point forward and worked
with him in a number of different capacities,
but early on he was management's nightmare. I
suppose he may -- in many respects may still
well be, but he was certainly that then.
MR. MADARASZ: (Inaudible.)
MR. HARTNETT: You know, I don't even
remember what the issues were except that he
came in and basically made some blanket charges
about the State and everybody on the management
side and I think he got the atmosphere that he
wanted there, which was he had us in a kind of a
defensive posture and we were, you know, really
trying to figure out exactly how we might quiet
this guy down, which was probably a good
strategy from his standpoint. I may, in fact,
still use that strategy today. I'm not sure.
But CSEA itself was the (inaudible)
force at that point for so much of -- changes
that were going on. I think at that time which
was 1979-80 the State was just moving out of
what had been a kind of paternalistic attitude
toward unions and CSEA was in the forefront of
saying, you know, we're gonna negotiate hard at
the table. we're gonna fight for wages.
The contracts when I first came up
into the state in 1978, every other term in the
contract was "meet and confer, shall consult."
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In other words, a lot of touchy-feely kind of
language, but there wasn't a lot of concrete
language that said, you know, thou shalt not do
this or you shall meet with the union and get
their approval prior to implement that.
So those kinds of things were not in
the contracts when I first arrived, but as we
started to -- as I started getting involved with
it, CSEA came forward -- not as a result of my
presence but CSEA was just at that point where
they were becoming much more aggressive and
saying, you know, we want to meet and confer
with you. We want you to seek our agreement on
this.
And so as a result of that those early
negotiations, I guess, in '79 and then again in
"82, they were fairly contentious negotiations
and Bob Giles, the fellow that I dealt with at
the Institutional Services Unit, was a very
aggressive guy who was out of one of the
institutions. I forget which one now, but he
had a wealth of knowledge about some of the good
and some of the bad that was goin' on and he was
not shy about sharing that at the table, so --
And then, of course, once we finished
with the union negotiations, then we will go
into the (inaudible) negotiations with Bill
McGowan, who was a character of major
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proportions, I always felt.
MR. MADARASZ: I would like to digress
with a little sketch of him at this point.
MR. HARTNETT: He was a very, very
interesting guy. I think he was -- if my memory
serves me correctly I think he was a TV
repairman from west Seneca. I think that was
his occupation and while he didn't have any
advanced degrees or the like, he kind of knew
where the deal was and he knew what the people
needed.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: And was extraordinarily
adept at voicing that at the table. He was not
a slave to good English and he would
occasionally go before the (inaudible) and say
just marvelous things. I remember being at a
press conference with him once where he said the
members were getting their dandruff up. That
was one of his lines.
(Laughter.)
MR. HARTNETT: And he kind of -- I
often wondered whether he said those things on
purpose. He would crack up the press corps.
They kind of adopted him as their own, so he was
a shrewd guy and he always had this cigar which,
when he really used to get aggravated -- we had
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a fella in -- who worked for me when I was at
Cinaudible) who was our research director who
was a very learned individual, had a lot of
degrees, was a slave to members, and he would
come to the table and give these dissertations
on why we could only do a two percent or two and
a half or three percent wage increase, whatever,
and I always remember the time Bill McGowan who
-- he used to smoke this cigar, and he'd put,
you know, maybe an inch of it, you know, in his
mouth and he would -- so it wasn't a pleasant
sight as he would kinda wave it around at the
table.
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah.
MR. HARTNETT: But this fellow, Jerry
Shrout (phonetic) who was my research director
was drinking coffee and he put his cup down on
the table and McGowan at some point took his
cigar and put it in his coffee.
(Laughter.)
MR. HARTNETT: And I don't think Jerry
was ever the same after that. He lived in fear
of Bill (laughter) but Bill was, again, one of
those guys that, you know, you could have
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someone come to the table and do, you know, 25
minutes of actuarial science, a really
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impressive numerical presentation, and Bill
would say, well, that may be and that's all
fine, but I need four percent and I ain't
leavin' till I get four percent, and he would
kinda take the wind out of what everybody says
and then he would hang tough until he got what
he was after.
So he was a very kind of interesting
guy who played to his strength, had a lot of
down-home stories about life in the facilities
Cinaudible) and I thought did a good job.
MR. MADARASZ: Good. That's a good
picture. I haven't heard that story of the
cigar in the coffee before. That's good.
MR. HARTNETT: Oh, yeah. He was a
very interesting guy.
MR. MADARASZ: See, there are little
things about people that sums up or tells you
who they are. I think that cigar thing is kind
of it. I mean it just -- and the dandruff
thing.
MR. HARTNETT: The other thing about
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Bill is that -- he was a tremendous advocate as
was CSEA for women in the workplace and I was at
the Governor's Office when we did the parity
equity settlement where we brought up a number
of primarily female-occupied titles up to a
greater parity based on a fairly comprehensive
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study that we had done by the State University.
And I remember going to do a press
conference with Bill McGowan and the upshot of
the study was that a fair number of people were
gonna be upgraded and not a lot of people, since
some titles were undervalued and some titles
were kind of slightly overvalued, so I said to
Bill, we kinda left open the potential for
downgrading and so I said to Bill, let me handle
that during the press conference because we're
gonna be out here talkin' about a lot of good
news for the membership but, you know, I have to
-- I'm representing the State and I need some
things to say.
So he said, okay, don't worry about
it. we'll take care of it so, of course, we go
to the press conference and the first question a
reporter asks is how many people are being
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downgraded. And McGowan says, (inaudible) no
one, no one's gonna be downgraded, so I said,
well, thanks, Bill. That's an enormous help to
me.
(Laughter.)
MR. HARTNETT: But he was a -- he was
quite a character, I guess.
MR. MADARASZ: Now, the pay equity
thing, how did that start? I mean where did
that issue --
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MR. HARTNETT: Right around the time
that CSEA was also most aggressively pulling out
these contracts and saying we don't want to
Cinaudible), we want an agreement, and putting
some tough language in the agreements, there was
also a -- the movement into the forefront of
women's rights and women in the workplace and
this was right around the time that we
negotiated day care centers and a vehicle to
allow day care centers to be created in a
variety of different facilities around the
state, and I think that was probably the first
union that ever really did that on such a
comprehensive basis.
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So we were all being sensitized by the
union and by the women in the union to some of
these issues. I confess that I did not get a
good sense of what on-site day care was all
about until I went into negotiations and started
talking to a lot of the women and the CSEA
bargaining teams at that time were close to 50
percent if not greater made up of women, and so
those issues started to come to the fore.
And one of the issues that came was --
by the way, the education, expertise, daily
activities of this title are not totally
dissimilar to this title. In some cases, they
might even be more rigorous than this title.
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MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: This title is 95
percent male, this title is 95 percent female.
Is there some reason why the top pay on this one
is $10,000 a year and the top pay on this one is
15? So we said we'll take a look at it and we
had a very reputable group up at SUNY look at it
and they -- and once they arrived at a
methodology to try and compare what were
seemingly different occupations but, of course,
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they were different occupations, but not so much
different in terms of the expertise, the daily
activities, the educational background, the
minimum qualifications, when we got through all
that they were very much the same, so the pay
should not have been as disparate as it was.
So that kind of affected the women
within CSEA who were emerging as -- I think they
were probably 45 to 50 percent of the work force
at that point in time.
MR. MADARASZ: This was in '70?
MR. HARTNETT: This would have been
"79 and '82.
MR. MADARASZ: All right. Good. Now,
after McGowan was McDermott.
MR. HARTNETT: That's correct. Joe
McDermott.
MR. MADARASZ: Dealt with him, too?
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MR. HARTNETT: Yes.
MR. MADARASZ: Give a little sketch of
him, like working with him.
MR. HARTNETT: Different than --
different than Bill. Not understood the process
very well, understood the State and how it
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functioned. was very good at articulating
discrete issues while with the State and I, by
this time, had moved, I believe, up to the Labor
Department. I didn't have that much direct
interaction with Joe as I did with Bill, but Joe
was a very effective leader who I believe came
out of the Department of Transportation and I
think what's interesting is as a president comes
out of a particular agency, a particular
discipline, and I know out of necessity kind of
know a little bit more about that and champion
some of those things.
So Joe was (inaudible) on the
transportation issues, very good on the
institutional services unit issues as was Bill,
and they together in a kind of an interesting
way -- I just want to digress for a moment.
One of the things that they did which
was enormously effective was they did a campaign
and I guess it was probably '79-'80 about Mental
Hygiene and moving people out into the
community, which was enormously effective and
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there was a lot of posters around the state and
billboards that said "She was Dumped" and it had
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a picture of a lady looking (inaudible) ina
setting that perhaps wasn't as good as it might
have been.
MR. MADARASZ: I remember them.
MR. HARTNETT: And as a result of that
Cinaudible) that drove Hugh Carey nuts, that
went on to see these posters and billboards and
the like. He then put myself and some others,
and at the time I worked with a guy by the name
of Sandy Fisher (phonetic) who was the director
of the office when I was the deputy, and put us
together and out of that along with the law firm
that was representing CSEA at the time, was
negotiating a thing called the Morgatta
(phonetic) Memorandum which was a memorandum
that said in state facilities there'd be a
certain level of staffing based on the number of
patients.
And what's interesting about that, I
think, is that I had occasion during my career
to go out and speak with parent groups about the
quality of care in the facilities around the
state in the Office of Mental Health and Mental
Retardation and the parents in many respects are
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the real continuity in the system.
Because if you had -- unfortunately
had a child that needs those services, you
become very wise about the server. You become a
monitor of the care at that facility. You maybe
get on the board of visitors in the facility
and, of course, you go to see your child
probably on a regular basis.
So when those folks talk about the
system and changes in the system, you gotta stop
and listen and these mothers told me that the
greatest change that they saw in the system for
the good was as a result of the Morgatta
Memorandum because with the Morgatta Memorandum,
it stood for the proposition that if you had a
hundred patients, you had to have 250 direct
care staff, whatever that ratio was.
And that is something that CSEA fought
for because their members wanted that because
they were concerned about the health and safety
of their members, the work schedule of their
members and the care being given to the
patients.
Now the order of those things might be
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slightly different from the State's perspective
but the bottom line is the list is the same;
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it's just a question of how they get kind of
jiggled around.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: So CSEA in fighting for
what it was interested in actually improved the
quality of care in New York State immeasurably
and again that's not me saying that. That's
people who have real expertise and a real
involvement with the system, so -- and that was
Bill McGowan and Joe McDermott that really
pushed that and did a terrific job, I thought.
MR. MADARASZ: Okay.
(Inaudible conversation.)
MR. MADARASZ: I want you to just give
me little pictures of things like that that
happened. I mean you seem very well prepared
for this. I don't even have to ask you any
questions. I know Steve gave me -- you said now
you were on the other side of the table because
that's what we're talking about. Give me some
more about Sandy. Tell me more about Sandy
Fisher and what he was like --
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MR. HARTNETT: Sandy was a very
different guy. He didn't have any background in
collective bargaining. when I came into the
State I had already negotiated contracts in the
private sector. Sandy did not and that was, you
know, kinda good news and bad news. Bad news
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was -- he was a quick study so the bad news
didn't last too long, but the good news was he
didn't feel a need to defend.
You know, very often when you see a
Management negotiations or a management in
negotiations they feel the need to defend in a
large system the conduct of every commissioner,
every supervisor or whatever. One of the things
that I thought Sandy was very good at is
recognizing that there were a lot of decisions
that are made out there that he would not have
made and that he was not gonna be burdened in
negotiations by having to defend every one and
he wasn't afraid to say, hey, I'll change
things.
And of course, he had the ear of the
Governor, which was always helpful.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m-m.
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MR. HARTNETT: I mean when I became
the chief negotiator for the State I was -- did
my own before I got the job, I became pretty
close with Mario Cuomo when he was the Governor,
so I kinda had his ear, and that of course
enables you to go to the table and say, well, if
you listen to the union, it made a lot of sense
about this issue.
There needs to be a change. Of course
you can say that the commissioner that's
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impacted by the change, but you know you can
always at some point go to the Governor and say,
you have to do this to the benefit of collective
bargaining, for the benefit of how we run this
corporation known as New York State, and for the
benefit of the government.
So Sandy is a good negotiator in that
he didn't bring a lot of the baggage with him
that sometimes negotiators do bring and he got a
lot done. Pretty effective guy, I thought.
MR. MADARASZ: So really it wasn't
exactly adversarial with CSEA on one side of the
table and you on the other.
MR. HARTNETT: Well, to some extent
24:
that was true and I mentioned that CSEA came and
testified at my confirmation hearings for Labor
Commissioner and in part they joked that they
were glad to get rid of me out of their
Cinaudible) and get me over to Labor, but I
think they thought that I was fair and
reasonable and right around that time, 1982 was
in my judgment kinda the high point of labor-
Management cooperation in the State because we
recognized that in an environment where 90 --
upwards of 90 percent of the work force is
organized, that if you're gonna be able to get
things done effectively you have to work with
your partners and one of the major partners is
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the union.
(Inaudible) then the State was in
getting legislation passed with their political
clout. They knew most of the politicians, they
knew the work force, they knew the issues, so
why would you not want to partner with someone
like that.
Now, what you need in that environment
is a union that's confident enough in itself and
a management confident enough in itself to be
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able to say better but we're still gonna argue
about 15 or 20 percent of the stuff, but we
shouldn't be arguing about resources for day
care because that's gonna help us by retaining a
quality work force.
we shouldn't be arguing about health
and safety issues. we shouldn't be arguing
about training issues. we shouldn't be arguing
about making the work place safer. Those kinds
of issues we ought to be working together on.
And we would address whether or not
there should be a four percent increase or a
five percent increase or whether or not due
process means you have to have notice and
discipline or whatever. Those things will
continue to maybe go back to our Commissioner
Rowe, but on the lion share of stuff we can
actually work together.
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And we were fortunate at that time
that we had Danny Donohue, for example, who was
a strong believer in this and someone who was
pushing that for a very long time at the
facility (inaudible). He started to progress up
through the hierarchy of the union and was able
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to push it, and again it takes confidence, I
think, and leadership ‘cause it's very easy to
go before a crowd of delegates or managers or
employees and say, yeah, we're gonna go in and
we're gonna bring ‘em to their knees and we're
gonna do this, that and the other thing, and
that's that kind of (inaudible) speech where we
didn't just (inaudible) but where does it get
you?
I mean in the final analysis, there's
a positive impact on the bottom line and I think
it takes a courageous leader to stand up in
front of the union meetings and say we're gonna
agree with 'em on this because it's gonna mean a
better work place and we're gonna work with ‘em
on training and we're gonna do some other
things.
So that round of negotiations we set
up primarily the management committees, we set
up the joint training funds, we set up the CSEA
employee benefit fund so they could deliver
certain health care benefits directly. we did a
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lot of that in '79 and '82 and then I'm not -- I
didn't follow the negotiations that closely
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since then, but I know that basically I think
that is probably the most progressive time in my
judgment ‘cause we really started a lot of those
things, on-site day care and whatever, and we
would actually put money in the contracts to do
that.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: And the reason we would
do that, and I'm not telling tales out of school
here, was that we would be locked into the cost
of the bargaining agreement that would be there
and if it was a three-year deal we were without
funding and we wouldn't have to worry about the
Division of the Budget coming and taking the
money off the table so they were after things
like day care and training. We were true
partners in that we said if we could put this
money in the contract you know you have it for
three years and you'll be able to educate the
work force.
That, of course, was great for the
union because they're providing good training
benefits for their members. In fact that as the
employer it was great for us because we had that
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competent qualified work force doing the job
MR. MADARASZ: Now you've mentioned
Danny, let's -- give me that same kind of
biographical sketch of Danny because you saw him
at the beginning, you know, to where he is now.
Any stories to tell --
MR. HARTNETT: well, that first
meeting, of course, down in Central Islip where
he come in and he was a real kind of rabble
rouser and at that point I think he was somewhat
of an outsider evaluating all the deals that
were being made on the statewide level and
supporting those that he agreed with and he was
not shy in terms of voicing his concern about
those things that he was not particularly happy
with.
And at that meeting we were, well,
this is probably the guy that we're gonna be
dealing with in the future and then he started
to be appointed to labor-management committees
and whatever and Danny, I always thought,
possessed a lot of the real attributes that a
labor leader needs.
First of all, he's not shy and he's
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willing to stand up and voice his concerns and
that's obviously very important. He also has
the ability to know when the deal is there and,
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you know, there are people that are very good at
getting up and listing their concerns but
there's a window of opportunity to make a deal
and sometimes they go right past the window.
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah.
MR. HARTNETT: The window closes and
then they're out there in the cold. I think
Danny knows when he's gonna get the best deal
for his members and that's when he's prepared to
sit down and talk turkey and get it done.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: If he doesn't think
it's sufficient for the members he won't go near
it. He is a guy that you would notice even as a
local chapter president. And then he started to
get very slowly more responsible positions as he
goes up through the union and I started to work
with him on a lot of different issues and he
always brought, you know, the membership to the
table.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m-m.
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MR. HARTNETT: He might have been by
himself, but he always had the membership with
him and we used to -- we used to kid about him
and say there's three things on his mind all the
time when he sits down and talks to ya, and it's
the membership, the membership, the membership.
I mean he just never takes his eye off that.
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And then, of course, he's the
beneficiary of having been a -- I forget what he
was now. I think he was a driver. I introduced
him once as that he always refers to himself as
a driver and he is a driver. He drove Hugh
Carey nuts. He drove Mario Cuomo nuts. I'm
sure he's gonna drive George Pataki nuts, but
there's an education you get working in a
facility and, you know, he's one of the great
examples of it.
Because he's actually been there when
some of these idiotic edicts from on high go
through the filtering process and get translated
at the local level, so he brings that
sensitivity of having been on the shop floor and
knowing what's going on there and he also has a
level of sophistication about him so he's
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comfortable in the board room and he's
comfortable on the shop floor and kind of
everywhere in between.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: And I think that in
essence is what a lot of folks are lookin' for
in a labor leader. I mean a guy that's willin'
to go in, understand the nuances of finance and
the like, understand where the employee can go
and can't go so they have a sense of where the
deal is. The rest are willing to roll up their
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sleeves, sit at the table and say, goddamn it,
I'm gonna stay here all night until I get this
issue resolved.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. HARTNETT: And I think he brings
those attributes to whatever issue he deals
with.
MR. MADARASZ: Right. I've talked to
a lot of people who were in CSEA for a long time
and it really turned at a point from being a
social organization to being a labor union and I
think part of that was AFSCME. Were you around
when that happened?
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MR. HARTNETT: Yes.
MR. MADARASZ: You were there. You
saw it happen and you were involved and you saw
its
MR. HARTNETT: Yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: Did you see the change?
Tell me your take on that, on that merge of
unions --
MR. HARTNETT: Well, when I first come
up to Albany in '78 I figure it was the early
stages of CSEA becoming really an aggressive
force to be recognized, reckoned with, and just
in that next two- or three-year period you
started to see the negotiations take a, you
know, a marked change for the better. Much more
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aggressive at the table, a feeling like we're
partners in this process; not gonna take the
crumbs that someone's prepared to give us, but
we're gonna fight for what we think is right.
And in the past, maybe someone would
come to the table and say, this is what we have,
two percent, and the discussion was over. Now I
have a group that's saying, well, that's maybe
what you think you can give but that's not what
30
we're gonna accept.
And then the other thing that I
noticed about the contracts were, again, there
was a lot of kind of soft language in the
contracts.
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah.
MR. HARTNETT: And that became
unacceptable. They didn't want -- CSEA said we
don't wanna meet with you so you can tell us
what you're gonna implement next Monday. we
want to negotiate with you so we can decide what
we will jointly implement next Friday. Big
change philosophically.
Now in the health insurance area which
was interesting also, they would come to the
table and say don't tell us what benefits you're
prepared to give us. Wwe wanna negotiate and, by
the way, we canvassed our membership. while you
have some geniuses up at Civil Service that
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HARTNETT
think this is what we want, let us tell you what
we want and it's not necessarily what those guys
up in the Campus there told us they wanted.
And then they kicked it to the next
level and said, by the way, we don't think
31
you're doin' a good job running the health
insurance program. If you give us the money for
the same benefits, we'll do it ourselves. In
fact I don't think they have the program anymore
because I think for some reason, in some
negotiations, they decided for strategic
purposes to give some of it back, but they run a
drug program that is very well run and, in fact,
in many cases probably run better than the State
was doing, and dumped the program and some other
benefits.
But there was a clear kind of
revolution into a much more aggressive take
charge kind of a union.
MR. MADARASZ: And you work -- you do
some work for CSEA now?
MR. HARTNETT: After I left the State
I did some lobbying for them. I do some
consulting with them now.
MR. MADARASZ: You're up to date on
what's goin' on in CSEA now?
MR. HARTNETT: Well, I'm not -- I
wouldn't consider myself an expert but I do --
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HARTNETT
MR. MADARASZ: You've been around
32
different sides of the table long enough to see
the progression up till now.
MR. HARTNETT: Oh, yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: (Inaudible) this
picture from when you first met McGowan to now
and how you would characterize CSEA.
MR. HARTNETT: Well, the involvement
with AFSCME, which I always viewed initially,
and this is just my opinion, that early on there
was an affiliation with AFSCME that wasn't --
there wasn't utilization of all the services
that AFSCME might offer.
And probably it's gone both ways.
AFSCME maybe didn't appreciate the
sophistication and the contacts and the like
that CSEA brought to the organization and CSEA I
don't think appreciated what AFSCME could do for
them, or perhaps wasn't taking advantage of all
of that early on.
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah.
MR. HARTNETT: That changed pretty
quickly, and I think by the early eighties there
was a sense that by the way if we asked AFSCME
to do xyz they'll do a good job and they'll do a
33
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HARTNETT
good job in washington, DC and that will help us
here.
And what's happened now as I've
watched it is there's kind of this synthesis of
two very formidable classes, CSEA at the New
York State level, AFSCME at the national level,
so that the Congressional delegation, for
example, not only hears from AFSCME but then the
message is reinforced by CSEA and they not only
hear from CSEA on a New York State issue but
that message is then reinforced by the people in
washington.
So there's a real kind of synergy
there that I think has made this a very, very
effective organization and I think Danny's done
a tremendous amount to help bring that about;
that feeling like, you know, we're strong, we're
aggressive. we're also part of a larger
organization that can do some pretty formidable
things also.
MR. MADARASZ: They can throw a
one-two punch?
MR. HARTNETT: Exactly. Exactly.
MR. MADARASZ: Good. Did I leave
34
anything out that you had already thought about?
MR. HARTNETT: NO, other than I have
-- I was out at a function recently and I met a
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HARTNETT.
former budget director from New York State and
we were talkin' about the unions, the public
sector unions, and CSEA in particular.
And, you know, from a management
standpoint what typically happens is a group of
the budget director, the head of OER, the
Governor's Office of Employee Relations and
someone like from the Governor's Office will get
together early in negotiations and try and
decide where we're going and what can we afford
and whatever.
And while those people very often have
the best intentions, without some advocacy on
the other side, left to their own devices, and I
was part of those meetings, so I can state this
pretty accurately, they'll opt because of the
fiscal constraints and the like for something
that's modest, to characterize it in a kind way.
So I said to this guy that I met the
other day who was a former budget director,
assume that the State employees have received a
35
50 percent increase over the last ten years.
what do you think it would have been had there
not been an aggressive CSEA at the bargaining
table? He said 20. I thought 20 was kinda
high. I woulda said maybe 16 or 17 because,
inevitably, notwithstanding the best intentions,
if there's nobody pushing back and you have all
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HARTNETT
these various competing demands and during the
period of time that I'm talking about CSEA now
you had the AIDS crisis, you had
deinstitutionalization, you had pension increase
costs, all these various competing factors, and
with all those people pushing on the system,
what's left on the table is usually not a great
deal.
And if there's nobody pushin' for the
work force, then what's left on the table is
what you're gonna get, so that evolution of CSEA
saying that I understand in the early seventies,
for example, people would come and say, well,
we've done our calculations and we're prepared
to give you two percent and that was pretty much
it, everybody could go home, to the point where
now there's vigorous debate and negotiations and
36
the State comes and says this is as much as
we're prepared to do and they also wound up
doing probably double that.
And that doesn't happen by accident.
It happens as a result of a sophisticated
bargaining table, a sophisticated research
department, a sophisticated parent union, and
lastly a gutsy leader by the name of Danny
Donohue, and a long, tough set of negotiations.
MR. MADARASZ: Is it going to
continue, knowing the problems you're facing in
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HARTNETT
the next couple years?
MR. HARTNETT: Oh, sure. Yeah, I
think so. I think unions are more and more
important in today's times and I think, you
know, CSEA has -- again plays a voice in so many
issues. I mean CSEA is over there fighting for
the minimum wage now. Now CSEA doesn't
represent anyone that makes minimum age.
Everyone makes much more than minimum wage. I
think there's much better benefits, but I think
there's a sensitivity in this organization and
in AFSCME to the fact that while the fights are
important, they're part of a larger fight, and
37
the larger fight is to bring everybody up.
So just the idea that CSEA expends a
lot of its capital, both intellectual and
financial, on issues like minimum wage and
health and safety, for people that they might
not necessarily even represent says a lot about
the organization and the social conscience it
has.
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah. I think that was
ingrained in it, too, even when it was a social
organization more than a union.
MR. HARTNETT: Yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: I think that was there.
They cared about each other then and they've
grown.
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HARTNETT
MR. HARTNETT: Yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: That's my opinion. I
shouldn't be even saying it but I'm not trying
to put words in your mouth. I've been talking
to people from a hundred years old to sixty
years old --
MR. HARTNETT: Yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: -- and they all tell me
the same story about the union.
38
MR. HARTNETT: Yes. Yes.
MR. MADARASZ: Amazing. Amazing
culture. That's the word somebody used,
culture.
MR. HARTNETT: Yeah. And it's
interesting that when we look now at magazines
or Net worth or -- Net worth is not the name of
the magazine. I'm trying to think of the name
of it. But anyway they do the top ten employers
in the country --
(Simultaneous conversation.)
MR. HARTNETT: -- perhaps Business
week, and one of the things that they talk about
is what are some of the things that make it
appealing. what are the things that make it a
terrific employer, and they'll go down this
list. I don't have the list in front of me but
my memory says (inaudible) about on-site day
care. They talk about flex time. They talk
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HARTNETT
about benefits for part-timers. They all talk
about the ability to get leave time during the
summer for working parents. They talk about
flex time.
They don't talk necessarily about
39
money. You know, money's there, but it's these
other things that make you a class employer.
Now, the State to some degree does all
of those things. I would submit to you that the
State would probably be doing half that list and
probably just giving it lip service if it wasn't
for CSEA. They're the ones that brought on-site
day care to the bargaining table and to the
State. As a result now I think there are 25 or
30 on-site day care centers around the state.
There's one that we built up at the
Labor Department when I was up there as
Commissioner with CSEA and there's 60 or 70 kids
in there and parents come, drop the kids off in
the morning, go to work, stop down have lunch
with them. I mean it's a wonderful thing to
see.
Flex time, a big issue, and that came
to the State as a result of CSEA. Part-time
benefits and the like, leave time in the summer
when young parents have kids at home and the
like, all those programs are the result of CSEA
advocacy at the table.
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HARTNETT
MR. MADARASZ: Right.
40
MR. HARTNETT: So they've made their
presence felt in a lot of different ways
we've left
anything e
pictures
developed
you.
Hartnett.)
MR. MADARASZ: well, I don't think
anything out. If you can think of
‘1se?
MR. HARTNETT: I don't think so.
MR. MADARASZ: You've given me
of the presidents and what CSEA has
into. It's been a pleasure to talk to
MR. HARTNETT: Good.
MR. MADARASZ: Thank you very much
MR. HARTNETT: My pleasure.
(conclusion of interview of Tom
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