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Rudy Giuliani on JobsFormer Mayor of New York City; Republican Candidate for 2000 Senate (NY) |
Any way you look at it, though, Giuliani’s being misleading. In December 2001, his last month in office, the unadjusted rate was 7.5%, the same as the adjusted rate. There was just one month, May 2001, when the unadjusted rate fell to 5.0%, the only one during his tenure when he could claim to have cut unemployment “by more than half.” In our judgment, it’s deceptive for Giuliani to cherry-pick a month to compare to the rate in the month he was inaugurated.
GIULIANI: Sure, I think unions have made a positive contribution. My grandmother was an early member of the United Ladies Garment Workers Union, and I don’t know that our family would have gotten out of poverty without that. But the reality is that there are good unions, and there are bad unions. Our free economy is like that.
McCAIN: I come from a right-to-work state. If someone wants to join a union in my state, they’re free to do so, but they are not compelled to do so.
GIULIANI: You know, the UAW reached a very responsible pact the other day. I don’t know that you could have gotten a solution like that if you didn’t have a vibrant union. But there are ones that aren’t good unions, and I think the senator is correct -- people should have a right to either belong to a union or not.
The good news was that by the end of the 1990s, the unemployment rate was low for white New Yorkers, at 3.6% in 2000, though not for blacks and Hispanics, at 7.5% and 8%, respectively. But the bad news was that holding a job was often insufficient to keep a family securely above the poverty line.
In 1998, the surfeit of applicants for inexpensive labor, fed by a sizable reduction in the welfare rolls, helped employers cut wages. Worse, Giuliani reversed the role that city government traditionally played in setting the salary standard for low-level employees. Over time, Giuliani’s policies governing $5 billion worth of city-contracted social services contributed to pulling wages downward.