Labor unions notched a high-profile victory Tuesday as D.C. Council members approved spending $22 million to pay thousands of city workers for the four holidays-turned-furlough days they were forced to take last year.
The D.C. Council, which has grappled with versions of the proposal for months, voted 11-2 Tuesday to support the spending. Mayor Vincent Gray, whose candidacy for the city’s top job benefited from significant union support, is expected to sign it into law.
“I’d like to thank Chairman [Kwame] Brown for his leadership and the entire council for helping to approve this supplemental budget,” said Gray, adding that the proposal would “help us do right by … our hard-working D.C. government employees who were forced to forfeit pay they otherwise would have received.”
Organized labor, which coordinated an intense lobbying effort to secure the payments, cheered the council’s vote.
“It puts money back in people’s pockets that can’t afford to lose a dime,” said Geo Johnson, the executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “It restores the economic power. It was a great victory for them.”
District leaders in February 2011 ordered the furlough days — which city employees took on Presidents Day, Emancipation Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day — in a bid to blunt a $188 million budget shortfall.
The District’s government, though, ultimately posted a $240 million surplus, prompting a scramble in the John A. Wilson Building to shore up several city programs.
Lawmakers quickly approved parts of Gray’s supplemental budget request, but his plan to pay workers drew sharp criticism, setting into motion a prolonged political saga.
By the time the council approved the furlough payments on Tuesday, the same body had already rejected versions of the plan three times in recent months.
Those delays had prompted dire warnings from union leaders, one of whom described the votes as tantamount to supporting “government-sanctioned robbery.”
At-large Councilman Michael Brown, who brokered the compromise that won the legislative body’s approval, said some lawmakers had worried about derailing other spending priorities.
“Some of us, in particular me, didn’t like the fact that we were pitting our government workers against some of our most vulnerable residents,” Brown said.
As a part of the deal, the council agreed to spend $2 million on the Housing Production Trust Fund.
At-large Councilman David Catania, who voted against the furlough payments, tried to divert the money to job training programs for long-term welfare recipients.
The council easily defeated Catania’s amendment.
