New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) is learning a lesson about the insatiable appetites of public-sector unions. After the City Council approved $10,000 bonuses for about 25,000 paraprofessionals in July, the first-year mayor sued last month to block the measure, even though he supported the idea during his campaign.
The move is earning the democratic socialist rare praise from the right, but this is less a profile in political courage than a collision with fiscal reality and a recognition that one-time cash awards can’t fix structural problems.
Compensation changes for unionized city employees are usually negotiated through collective bargaining between the city and organized labor, but the United Federation of Teachers instead pushed the measure through the City Council. UFT President Michael Mulgrew threatened “all-out war” against Mamdani if he opposed the payouts to school paraprofessionals.
Mamdani did not veto the bill, reportedly because he knew the council would override him. Instead, he waited to let it become law and then sued the council. The mayor argues that the council violated New York labor law by going around him. The union filed a motion in court to support the payments late last month.
The mayor’s office says the bonuses would cost the city about $325 million, but the real cost would be what comes next. Allowing the teachers union to end-run the collective bargaining progress would open the floodgates for other unions to do the same. Just two days after the council approved the bill, for example, another member was already looking to pass bonuses of $20,000 or more for EMTs and paramedics.
Mamdani sensed the coming wave, and he’s now trying to patch a dam that he wanted to smash less than a year ago.
What’s lost in the political fracas is any movement toward the real reforms urgently needed by the city schools’ paraprofessional program. These teacher aides, who provide one-on-one instructional help to students with disabilities, are some of the lowest-paid school employees. A starting annual salary can be as low as around $33,000.
The union says the city has about 1,600 paraprofessional vacancies. But the school system doesn’t actually know how many it’s missing, because there are not clear criteria for when a student needs a paraprofessional’s help, according to the Manhattan Institute’s Jennifer Weber.
That means boroughs with laxer standards divert resources from other parts of the city. Staten Island assigns far more paraprofessionals per school, not necessarily because it has needier kids, Weber says, but because it sets a lower bar for when a student warrants one-on-one assistance. Setting clear criteria, and perhaps raising the overall pay levels for these aides, can help ensure students get the tutoring they need.
But $10,000 bonuses won’t solve those problems. Mulgrew, the head of the teachers union, faced his stiffest leadership challenge in more than a decade last year. Paraprofessionals make up about a fifth of active members. Getting one-time checks for them seems motivated more by shoring up Mulgrew’s standing with the rank and file than improving education.
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