Public Employee Press

Union to represent 200 former managers

DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido: "The union's agreement with the city to represent the improperly classified managers reflects our plan to more aggresively organize new members."

Under an agreement between the union and the city, nearly 200 municipal workers previously categorized as managers are now Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 members.

"We are happy to welcome these new members into the union," DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido said.

The accord, Garrido said, reflects the union's plan to more aggressively organize new members, after suffering a decline of 12,000 during the final years of the Bloomberg administration.

The Oct. 2 agreement converts eight managerial level 1 engineering and other technical titles to newly created union titles.

Job protections

The new members will now enjoy job protections and welfare fund benefits like DC 37's other 121,000 members.

They will receive the 3 percent wage increase due in September 2016 and be eligible for paid ove time and an $800 longevity increment when they reach their 15th year of city service.

"This is a tremendous victory," Local 375 President Claude Fort said.

"The settlement not only offers job security for our 188 new members but also creates promotional opportunities and a career path for thousands of the local's other members," Fort said.

DC 37 and Local 375 briefed 50 of the former managerial level 1 workers about the agreement on Oct. 19.

The workers' annual pay can reach up to $132,061 under their new career and salary plan.

DC 37 and Local 375's effort to represent the new workers involved complicated legal and technical talks between union officials and city labor relations representatives.

A couple of years ago, Local 375 petitioned the Office of Labor Relations to represent the managerial level 1 employees.

Municipal unions may win the right to represent non-union titles if they successfully show that the workers they seek to organize share a "community of interest" with their members.

The city, DC 37 and Local 375 decided to hammer out an agreement rather than argue about the matter before the Board of Certification and otherwise engage in a protracted fight. To make the agreement happen, Local 375 withdrew its petitions to represent two M1 titles.

The new union titles are Administrative Architect, Administrative City Planner, Administrative Construction Project Manager, Administrative Engineer, Administrative Housing Development Specialist, Administrative Inspector (Buildings), Administrative Landmarks Preservationist and Administrative Landscape Architect.

"This was a lot of hard work involving very technical issues," said DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept. Director Evelyn Seinfeld. Before the petition filing, the department studied which managerial and other unrepresented titles should be covered by the union.

The union team that reached the agreement included Fort, General Counsel Robin Roach, Sr. Assistant General Counsel Erica-Gray Nelson and Assistant General Counsel Jesse Gribben.

For some workers, a homecoming

Some of the M1 workers used to be in Local 375. So, for Michel Kenny, the settlement represents a homecoming.

"I am looking forward to being back in the union," said Kenny, who was the 2nd vice president of Local 375 on Fort's team before his promotion to the managerial level 1 title.

Kenny described his promotion to the managerial position as a "double-edged sword," saying that while it was nice to get a raise, the new managerial position lacked the job security of union membership.

Bhaskar Gusani was hired nine years ago as an M1. Because he is not so familiar with unionism, Gusani said that he was uncertain what the change will bring. But he described job security as the most important benefit over his previous position.

— Gregory N. Heires