PEP, November-December 2012: Back to bargaining

Public Employee Press

Back to bargaining

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The union and the city are back at the bargaining table, engaging in tough negotiations for a new economic agreement covering about 100,000 members.

Both sides are locked in battle as the city makes its usual claim of poverty while the union points to funding sources that would help pay for a fair wage hike.

"The money is there for a fair and equitable package," DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Evelyn Seinfeld said. "The city has the money. It's just a matter of how it is distributed."

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts noted that the union has suggested how the city could obtain hundreds of millions of dollars for raises.

These steps include letting go of consultants and bringing work in house; tapping new and existing revenue sources, and using money recovered from criminal and corrupt contractors who stole and wasted up to an estimated $1 billion. DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido outlined the union's finding during the latest negotiating session with the city.

Union and city negotiators sat down at the bargaining table on Sept. 24 after discussions remained stalled for nearly a year because of a number of factors, including a particularly difficult battle over the city budget and a fight over layoffs at the Dept. of Education. The opening session occurred in November 2011.

The perpetual budget crisis

"It seems every time we sit down there is a budget crisis," said Seinfeld, during the DC 37 Negotiating Committee's caucus before the session, correctly anticipating that Labor Commissioner James F. Hanley would plead poverty at the bargaining session. Seinfeld outlined a number of reasons why members need and deserve a raise when the committee met minutes later with city negotiators (see accompanying box).

At the session, Roberts expressed her indignation over how the city often includes automatic annual increases in its contracts with consultants while city employees struggle to meet their household needs with stagnant wages. Roberts also raised the matter of the outstanding work of a salary review panel set up under the 2005-08 economic agreement.

As the city and union discuss the economic agreement, Roberts said both parties also need to conclude the work of the panel, which is supposed to provide a framework for addressing pay inequalities of several titles represented by DC 37. Through the panel, the union eyes improving compensation for:

workers in revenue-producing titles;
employees in titles or occupational groups that were previously contracted out but are now filled by union members;
workers whose duties have evolved to require significant improvements in their skills and responsibilities and
workers whose compensation falls significantly below their counterparts with similar positions in the private sector or comparable state, county or municipal jobs.

The union seeks a "fair, reasonable and livable" wage increase in the new contract. It wants a three-year deal with additional funding for health and welfare benefits and a no layoff clause. The demands include eliminating the reduced initial pay scale and lower benefits for new workers, adding a recurring annuity payment and increasing mileage and meal allowance.

The city wants to impose the terms of current state employee contracts on DC 37.

The state model calls for a five-year deal with three years of frozen wages. For DC 37, the model is absurd because all but a few of DC 37 members don't have step-pay plans while state workers regularly receive annual boosts in addition to across-the-board pay increases.

DC 37's latest economic agreement expired in March 2010. Its terms remain in effect as the union and city negotiate the new contract. The last pay increase occurred on March 3, 2009.

The economic agreement covers 100,000 workers at city agencies, the Health and Hospitals Corp., libraries and cultural institutions, and the New York City Housing Authority.

In October, Roberts followed up the negotiating session by sending a letter to Hanley in which she expressed the union's wish to pursue the contract talks and salary review negotiations on parallel tracks. In addition, she identified items worth $1.2 billion that would help fund the agreement.

Breaking with past negotiations, Bloomberg has failed to include a labor reserve in the budget, and he has threatened municipal unions with layoffs while insisting raises be funded through productivity and givebacks.

Earlier this year, a spokesperson from the Office of the City Comptroller criticized Bloomberg's labor policy, noting that two thirds of the municipal workforce, or 200,000 employees, are working under expired contracts. He made the observation after a judge ruled against Bloomberg's attempt to gain control over negotiating the wages of 10,000 city prevailing-rate workers employed by the city. For over a century, the comptroller has been responsible for setting those wage rates.