Public Employee Press

Union to launch pay talks

BY GREGORY N. HEIRES

The union will soon call on the Bloomberg administration to open bargaining for a new economic agreement. With the state budget in place, the DC 37 Negotiating Committee decided April 13 to press for the negotiations.

"Now that the city's financial situation is becoming clearer, we are ready to sit down and begin talks in earnest," DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said. "Considering the wasteful spending on contracts that must be curbed, the city certainly has the resources to provide its employees with a fair wage increase."

The union's latest economic agreement, which included two 4 percent pay increases, expired March 2, 2010; its terms remain in effect while a new contract is negotiated. The agreement covers about 100,000 members at mayoral agencies, the Health and Hospitals Corp., the Housing Authority, libraries and cultural institutions.

Since the contract expired, the Negotiating Committee has met periodically to evaluate the bargaining climate, discuss strategy and approve demands. The committee, made up of the presidents of the union's 55 locals, won't publicly release the demands until talks begin.

Predictably, Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims that the city has no money for raises and says any increases must be funded through productivity improvements.

District Council 37 has consistently maintained that funds are available for raises, both through reducing the tremendous waste in the $10.5 billion contracting-out budget and by collecting revenues the city currently neglects.

Following the union's February hearing that showed massive waste and fraud in contracting out, DC 37 scheduled a hearing on the city's failure to collect millions of dollars in business and property taxes for April 28.

After consultants on the troubled CityTime automated payroll project were arrested for an $80 million fraud scheme, Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith acknowledged in a Daily News article that the city could save money by canceling wasteful contracts and bringing more work in-house. "We are waiting to see whether this actually signals a shift in policy," Roberts said.

In April, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the administration should cut spending on contracts to avoid layoffs in the mayor's proposed budget.

"Our message has to be very strong that this is a political budget and money is available," Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 President Behrouz Fathi told the Negotiating Committee as he spoke in favor of starting bargaining.

Alluding to the unfavorable national political climate for public employees, Lifeguard Supervisors Local 508 President Peter Stein urged the union to mount an aggressive public relations campaign to highlight the services that members provide and make the case for raises.

"There is money here and I would rather stand for something than die for nothing," said Amir Smith, the recently elected president of American Museum of Natural History Local 1306.

DC 37 is mobilizing for a major fightback rally on June 14, when city workers and community allies will call for an end to the mayor's layoffs, service cuts, excessive contracting out and attacks on civil service.