Teamsters President James P. Hoffa said in an interview on Thursday that Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s call for 10 percent across the board pay cuts was “unreasonable.”
“There are no easy answers to the problems facing Detroit,” said Hoffa, a Detroit native who has headed the union since 1999. The union represents between 2,200 and 2,500 city workers in Detroit through its Local 214, he said.
“You have to have proper taxes for all of our muncipalities so we can support the services. Everybody expects to have police, firemen, roads without holes, streetlights, our garbage picked up. We deserve that. That’s why you live in a civilized society,” Hoffa said. “There just seems to be some other way to make the poor city workers continue to sacrifice after they have already taken a number to cuts. To ask them to take more cuts sounds unreasonable.”
Hoffa called for tax revenue from large companies. “There’s got to be some way to take and get more money out of the RenCen and all of the big companies that have moved in there — and to have more taxes,” said Hoffa said. General Motors Co. has its headquarters at the RenCen.
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