Word: macs
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...Just a month ago, Beame had announced that the city's fiscal crisis was largely over. His premature optimism was based on New York State's creation of Big Mac with the authority to convert the city's short-term notes into long-term securities. Few thought that the corporation's nine illustrious voting members would have trouble marketing its bonds. To their surprise, Big Mac members discovered that many investors were unwilling to buy their offerings. Even though Big Mac bonds were secured by revenues from the city sales and stock-transfer taxes, they dropped...
Teaming up, Big Mac members and city officials squared off against the city's union leaders. Representing about 65% of the 320,000 municipal workers, the unions have gained an estimated 129% salary increase for their full-time employees between 1961 and 1973, in contrast to an 85.2% increase in the city's private sector. For four days and almost as many nights, the negotiations rum bled on, punctuated by occasional outbursts that could be heard through the closed hotel room doors. "For Christ's sake!" ... "F___ that!" ... "I'm fed up with Gotbaum...
When the maneuvering and posturing came to an end-at least for the time being-an agreement had been hammered out between the city and most of the unions. The pact provided not exactly a wage freeze, as Big Mac had wanted, but rather a sort of partial freeze: a graduated deferral of the 5% to 6% pay raise that had taken effect July 1. It would be put off until the end of fiscal 1978 and then would be granted only if the city's budget is balanced and if its bonds are being accepted by investors...
...rollback was indeed an unprecedented act of abnegation on the part of organizations that had known nothing but gains for the past several years. It thus may create an important pattern for future negotiations between city and unions, both in New York and elsewhere. Observed a member of Big Mac: "The union leaders have had no experience in bargaining anything away. It's an unnatural process, like a parent talking about selling a child...
...city with a loan of $250 million to help it avoid defaulting on $741 million in notes that fall due on Aug. 22, the next critical debt payment deadline. To fill the rest of the city's cash needs for August, including payroll and other expenses, Big Mac expects to make a private sale of some $650 million in bonds to a variety of New York institutions: banks, insurance companies, pension funds, corporations. Thus, Big Mac will not have to return to the public market until investors have had a chance to study Beame's austerity program...