Public Employee Press

Negotiations speed up
Union presses on wages

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The union made a comprehensive counteroffer with a specific pay increase on Feb. 18 in the first bargaining session since the city presented its initial wage offer in January.

“This was probably one of our most fruitful negotiating sessions,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts during a talk at Local 375’s Black History Month celebration just two hours after the bargaining meeting ended at DC 37 headquarters in lower Manhattan.

“These talks are now getting very serious and heated,” she said.

Costing out a proposal
The DC 37 Negotiating Committee, which is made up of the union’s 56 local presidents, hammered out the counterproposal in a caucus session during the Feb. 18 negotiating meeting.

The union’s previous contract — which covers 100,000 municipal employees represented by DC 37 — expired on June 30, 2002, though its terms remain in effect during the negotiations.

In an apparent signal that the city shares the union’s desire to speed the pace of negotiations, Labor Commissioner James F. Hanley suggested at the end of the Feb. 18 session that both sides immediately assign people to work on technical issues.

So, the following day, the DC 37 Pension Committee, chaired by Local 1320 President James Tucciarelli, met with city labor relations officials to discuss retirement issues.

The union and the city also quickly assigned their budget experts to study the cost of the union’s counteroffer. Both sides agreed to hold another bargaining session on Feb. 23 (after Public Employee Press’s printing deadline). At that meeting, the city will formally respond to the union’s position.

In his opening remarks on Feb. 18, Mr. Hanley did not comment on the union’s rejection last month of the city’s initial wage offer, which was part of a comprehensive proposal that also dealt with such matters as the length of the work week, terminal leave, summer hours, pensions and hiring rates. But he indicated his hope that negotiations would intensify.

“I think the time has come to resolve this one way or another,” Mr. Hanley said. He expressed his hope that both parties would be able to come up with a new contract either “through negotiations” or “through some kind of third-party intervention.”

After Mr. Hanley’s remarks, the bargaining session was interrupted as the DC 37 Negotiating Committee held a caucus. Ms. Roberts and Dennis Sullivan, director of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept., then led the committee through a discussion in which committee members crafted a counterproposal.

During contract talks, the union and the city traditionally agree not to disclose details of wage offers and counteroffers, partly to avoid media attention and to keep politics out of the negotiations process. But the negotiating ground rules permit both sides to speak freely about their overall priorities.

When the union and the city resumed talks, Mr. Sullivan alluded to Mr. Hanley’s remarks and said, “If we are reading you correctly, we have made a turn for the better.” He then presented the city with the union’s counterproposal.

Besides wages, retirement issues and the term of the contract, the counteroffer dealt with job security, longevity, additional compensation, the annuity fund, funding for welfare fund benefits and child care.

The Feb. 18 session was the ninth meeting in the current round of bargaining talks. The contracts of virtually all the municipal unions have expired, so the city faces growing pressure from budget watchdogs to conclude contract talks. The teachers and police unions are also in negotiations.

After the city and municipal unions reached a major accord on health and other benefits in December, DC 37 pressured the city to come up with a wage offer.