NEW YORK – Why in the world would anyone want to be the next mayor of New York City?

The current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has effectively addressed the city’s financial problems by putting the city’s labor unions in their place. None of the unions have received new contracts for several years, and none have been granted across-the-board raises for their members, according to the New York Daily News.

While that may sound harsh, union labor is very expensive, and the city could not afford to increase worker compensation during the recent fiscal crisis.

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But the unions have been waiting in the wings for the next mayor – preferably one that they endorse – to replace Bloomberg Jan. 1. At that point they are not only prepared to demand raises, but also retroactive pay increases for the years they worked without a contract, the news report said.

The various unions are prepared to collectively demand a massive amount of money – somewhere between $7.2 and $7.8 billion – for back pay alone, according to the news report.

One good example is the United Federation of Teachers. It president, Michael Mulgrew, believes the city owes UFT members a total of $3.2 billion in retroactive raises.

After back pay is addressed, the unions are prepared to seek new contracts that would include raises for several years into the future. That could all add up to a crippling burden for a city trying to pull itself out of the financial chaos caused by the Great Recession.

The only way to satisfy the unions would be to take a lot of money away from other programs in the city budget, or increase taxes. Neither option appears very promising.

“You would need to cut all over the place, including in places that people hold sacred, like education,” Maria Doulis, who works for the city’s budget commission, was quoted as saying.

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Would higher taxes get it done?

“You would have to get taxes up to a stratospheric level to pay for something like even half of that   on an ongoing basis,” said E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

The people of New York, like those in many major cities, have a long-running love affair with organized labor. The vast majority would probably faint at the idea of having public employees who were not represented by one union or the other.

But perhaps the absurd cost of hiring union workers to perform almost every task in sight will make taxpayers reconsider their sympathies. Governments that dedicate so much to the cost of labor have far less money available to meet other needs and priorities.

Perhaps the voters will have the good sense to elect a new mayor a lot like Bloomberg, who knows what the city can and can’t afford, designs his polices accordingly, and is willing to fight to hold the line on city spending.