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Among the items on the finance committee’s agenda this week was a resolution endorsing Mayor Daley’s plan to make nonunionized city employees take 15 unpaid days off—essentially a 10 percent pay cut. After Burke introduced the resolution to the full council yesterday, he took a rhetorical detour, as he is wont to do, and demonstrated, with no small outrage, that the city has other places it could cut costs besides worker pay—such as the contract for transporting dead bodies.
As the Trib reported this morning—and as it reported in 2006—Chicago taxpayers have probably been paying too much for this service for years. Burke, though, appeared to shock his colleagues by sharing a few details he and his staff had just uncovered.
He noted that one of GSSP’s higher-ups is also a travel agent, which had him wondering: “I don’t know where these deceased persons are going before they reach their heavenly reward.”
And so, Burke maintained, the council had to sign off on the pay cuts. “I’m not sanguine about this, but I think we have to do it.”
All of them joined Burke in voting for the salary cut plan, which passed 42-6.
