Public Employee Press

Local 375 gains 200 new members
Managers reclassified as unionized employees

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The union reached a second agreement with the city to allow Local 375 to represent employees who were misclassified as managers.

DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and Local 375 President Claude Fort signed the agreement with the city on Nov. 4. In October, the city and the union reached the first agreement, assigning nearly 200 former managerial workers to the local.

"This is a wonderful way to expand the union," said Fort about the deal, which provides 126 former managers with union representation.

A couple years ago, the local filed two petitions with the Office of Labor Relations to represent managerial level 1 employees. The de Blasio administration agreed to discuss which titles share a "community of interest" with Local 375 members instead of disputing the matter before the city Board of Certification.

The second agreement affects workers in three titles covered by the managerial 1 pay plan in agencies around the city: Administrative Director of Laboratory (water quality), Administrative Project Director (Dept. of Housing, Preservation and Development), and Administrative Project Manager. The agreement, formally known as a stipulation of settlement, excludes workers in several titles that the union and city agreed are managerial or confidential.

The DC 37 team that worked on both agreements included Fort, General Counsel Robin Roach, Sr. Assistant General Counsel Erica Gray-Nelson and Assistant General Counsel Jesse Gribben.

Jerry Aliberti, who has worked as a provisional manager at the Dept. of Design and Construction for about three years, is one of the workers affected by the agreement. Before his promotion, Aliberti was a member of Local 375 for 30 years.

Aliberti said he was pleased he will be classified under a new civil service title that will give him job security. As a provisional manager with limited rights, he always faced possibility of being laid off or reassigned to his old civil service title, Associate Project Manager, which pays less.

"It's nice to have the union security," said Aliberti, who nevertheless noted that managerial and union titles have their pros and cons. Managers, for instance, have a better eyeglass benefit than union members. On the other hand, DC 37 members enjoy a better prescription drug benefit, he said.

Besides giving the former managers job security, contractual rights and civil service protections, the agreement will also benefit other members of the local.

"This opens up a new title series for our members to promote into," Fort said. "Local 375 has a history of doing its best to help our members advance their careers."