Opinion ID: 795813
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Imposition of the Wage Freeze

Text: 7 On October 21, 2003 the Buffalo Fiscal Authority approved the City's first four-year financial plan under the Act. Prior to the submission of the plan, the Board had already ordered the City to institute a hiring freeze and had also instructed the City to exclude from the plan wage increases that were not contractually required. The City approved a tax increase for its 2004-05 budget and planned for another tax increase in the last year of the four-year plan; together the city tax increases amounted to $6.3 million. 8 Six months later, in reviewing how the plan's implementation was proceeding, the Board realized the plan no longer complied with the Act. The BFSA discovered that for the 2004-05 fiscal year Buffalo projected a budget gap $20 million greater than the $30 million gap previously estimated. The Board was further troubled by the estimate that the projected City budget gap for the next four years would exceed $250 million. 9 As a result of these concerns, on April 21, 2004 the Buffalo Fiscal Authority invoked its wage freeze power and determined that a wage freeze, with respect to the City and all Covered Organizations, is essential to the maintenance of the Revised Financial Plan and to the adoption and maintenance of future budgets and financial plans that are in compliance with the Act. The Board further resolved that effective immediately, there shall be a freeze with respect to all wages . . . for all employees of the City [which] shall apply to prevent and prohibit any increase in wage rates. The wage freeze took effect that day, and effectively prohibited members of the plaintiff unions from enjoying a two percent wage increase that the unions had negotiated as part of their labor contracts with the City.