Detroit’s tipping point is a warning for Chicago

by Paul Kersey How did Detroit get to be the urban disaster area it is today? One tipping point come in 1978, when a union got a “win” that cost the city, and eventually its own members, dearly. This “win” came in the form of a raise concession granted to a powerful police union, which...

by Paul Kersey

How did Detroit get to be the urban disaster area it is today? One tipping point come in 1978, when a union got a “win” that cost the city, and eventually its own members, dearly.

This “win” came in the form of a raise concession granted to a powerful police union, which led to years of hardship and financial struggles.

Even before 1978, Detroit had serious problems. For a decade after widespread riots in 1967, families relocated to the suburbs at an alarming pace. Detroit lost more than 300,000 residents between 1970 and 1980.

But in the fall of 1978, the city of Detroit showed signs of recovery. Crime rates were dropping – by 19 percent in 1977 alone – and as the Detroit News observed, “People are beginning to return to the downtown … beginning to lose their wariness about venturing into the city.”

Detroit’s health was still precarious though. The city’s budget was tight, and Mayor Coleman Young needed a lean contract with the police and firefighter unions to make it work.

Young had a background in radical politics through the United Auto Workers union and in the civil rights movement, and he had been sharply critical of police tactics, so his relationship with the police union was already poor. Then the police union insisted on a cost-of-living adjustment that was especially costly in that era of high inflation. Young argued, correctly, that the city could not afford the raises. An arbitrator was appointed to settle the issue, and he sided with the police.

The ruling did serious damage to Detroit’s budget. Young eventually resorted to large-scale layoffs of police officers. Over the next two years the Detroit police force was cut by more than 25 percent. Crime rates jumped 15 percent in 1980. In 1981, the union agreed to a three-year wage freeze, but by then Detroit’s decline had taken on a momentum of its own.

It would be unfair to put all the blame on the police and fire unions. Racial discord, setbacks in the automobile industry, and the controversial policies of Mayor Coleman Young all played their part.

But it is very possible that if the union had lost its arbitration hearing in 1978, the city as a whole would be in far better shape today – and so would thousands of city workers.

Today the city of Chicago faces a lot of the same challenges that Detroit did in 1978. Chicago’s population has dropped by 200,000 in the last decade, and violent crime rates are among the highest for major cities.

The city’s budget is in poor shape, too. Pensions in particular are dangerously underfunded, and Chicago Public Schools is shuttering 50 schools in an attempt to close a $1 billion dollar budget hole.

And in spite of all that, the city’s unions are still “winning” contracts that Chicago’s taxpayers cannot afford – and that are backfiring on government workers.

Last fall’s teacher strike by the militant Chicago Teachers Union saddled a troubled school district with even higher wages and larger pension costs. Chicago Public Schools have responded just as the Detroit Police Department did – with massive layoffs.

Union officials might try to disguise their wants as moral obligations, but no community can afford to give government workers everything they might want. No city should ever be forced to bankrupt itself.

Local government workers need to balance their own wants against the health of the communities they serve. If they don’t, they can tear down their communities; and government workers should not think they will be exempt from the suffering.

Has Chicago reached its tipping point? It is too early to say, but one thing is certain: Chicago must be allowed to live within its means, and that in turn means that it must be able to hold the line on employee costs while providing basic services such as quality education and public safety. The alternative is not some sort of workers’ paradise, but a ruined city where all – public workers included – are worse off.

Paul Kersey grew up in the City of Detroit, just a few blocks from Eight Mile Road. and attended MacKenney Elementary School — a Detroit public school — on the city’s Northwest side. Kersey’s family still resides in the Metro Detroit area, and he regularly visits for such things as Detroit-style pizza (gives Chicago a run for its money, says he) and Tigers games. “Detroit is both a tragedy and a scandal,” says Paul, “The sheer waste is mindboggling. Someday we’ll get around to telling the real story of the place, and when that happens our whole national conversation is going to be different.”