|
May 23, 2003
Lynch Seeks 2nd Term
Giving City’s Police Reason to Believe
By Mark Daly
After four years at the helm, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association
President Patrick J. Lynch is touting his transformation of the
23,000-member union.
The locks and buzzers are gone from the doors of the PBA’s
office on Fulton Street in Manhattan, a building once considered
inaccessible by the union’s members. The precinct delegates
have all been issued beepers so any cop in trouble can reach them
24 hours a day.
A grueling court battle and contract arbitration fight last year
gave cops a 10-percent raise over two years and ensured that any
disputes in the new round of negotiations will be resolved by the
state Public Employment Relations Board, a shift which Mr. Lynch
says is to the union’s advantage.
‘Big Wins, But Still…’
Mr. Lynch’s challenge now is to get officers to care enough
about the changes to give him a second term.
“We have gotten huge victories for this organization,”
he said in an interview last week. “But there’s an awful
long way to go. You have to keep moving forward.”
Mr. Lynch is facing a challenge from Thomas Barnett, the union’s
Manhattan North Trustee, who has assembled a “True Rank and
File” slate for the PBA’s top five posts and two dozen
other officers.
In visits to precincts, Mr. Barnett attacks the incumbents on bread-and-butter
issues. The salary increase Mr. Lynch achieved through arbitration
is “virtually nothing,” he says, compared to the larger
raises negotiated by the Teachers’ and Librarians’ unions.
He also lambastes Mr. Lynch for imposing a $5 co-payment for prescription
drugs obtained through the union’s benefit fund.
Mr. Lynch, in turn, says his opponent is “devoid of ideas.
They’re just saying they’re going to negotiate but they
don’t have a plan as to how.”
A campaign flyer released by the “Team Lynch” slate
accuses Mr. Barnett of shirking his trustee responsibilities to
work a second job as a Broadway stagehand, a charge Mr. Barnett
indignantly denies.
Ballots in the PBA’s officer elections are scheduled to be
mailed out May 23. They will be counted by the American Arbitration
Association on June 7.
A Team of Incumbents
The top candidates on the “Team Lynch” slate, all incumbents,
are John Puglissi, for first vice president, Mubarak Abdul-Jabbar
for second vice president, Joseph A. Alejandro for treasurer, Robert
Zink for recording secretary, and Brian Mooney for citywide trustee.
The son of a Transit Authority motorman, Mr. Lynch worked as a
subway Conductor for less than a year before entering the Police
Academy in 1984 at age 20. He spent his career in the 90th Precinct,
which covers the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Before becoming
a delegate, “I was on patrol, and I also did Community Affairs,"
he said.
Mr. Lynch took office in 1999 in the union’s first competitive
election in 15 years, after campaigning as an outsider in a bruising
four-way race. More than 16,000 cops voted in the election, about
60 percent of the membership at the time.
The incumbent, James “Doc” Savage, and other candidates
from the union’s executive board paid the price for a two-year
wage freeze in the union’s five-year contract, as well as
a kickback scandal in the former Transit Police union that ensnared
the PBA’s lawyers and its former negotiator.
Mr. Lynch’s campaign this time seems to count on his members
having long memories for what came before him.
“Modernized Union”
Past administrations “did not want to make the difficult
political decisions,” Mr. Lynch said as he explained how the
$5 co-pay helped stabilize an ailing benefits fund. The union has
bombarded members with leaflets and mailings, he continued, because
previous leaders “kept members in the dark. We had to bring
this organization up to modern times.”
Two recent low points in police-community relations in the city,
the stationhouse torture of Abner Louima and the shooting of Amadou
Diallo by four Street Crime Unit cops both happened before Mr. Lynch
was elected, but his administration dealt with the fallout. On what
Mr. Lynch calls “a business decision,” the PBA, through
its insurance carrier, paid $1.5 million to settle a civil suit
brought by Mr. Louima over the conduct of PBA delegates in his infamous
case.
“We were getting painted with the brush of the image of the
old PBA,” Mr. Lynch said. “And it takes time for people
to realize there’s a change in the PBA. The citizens now know
who defends New York City police officers when they’re wrongly
accused.”
Steady Drumbeat on Pay
The union’s “aggressive media campaign,” to use
Mr. Lynch’s phrase, has focused on taking the city to task
over cop’s salaries, which the union contends have lagged
behind the pay offered to cops in the suburbs and at the Port Authority.
The PBA has adjusted its strategy as the city’s budget crisis
has deepened. Mr. Lynch said, the PBA recently provided precinct-staffing
data to local community boards to enlist their assistance in fighting
Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to shrink the Police Department through
attrition.
His opponent, Mr. Barnett, takes a more cynical view of the union’s
outreach efforts. He points out that the major fighting in Iraq
had ended by the time the PBA’s “Support Our Troops”
billboards began appearing near city bridges earlier this month.
The ads feature a cop in counter-terrorism gear standing beside
a uniformed soldier, with Mr. Lynch’s name at the bottom.
(Mr. Lynch says billboard companies donated the space when it became
available.)
Last week, Mr. Lynch launched a second ad campaign, titled “Don’t
Blame the Cop,” to bring the PBA’s allegations of ticket
quotas to the public’s attention. The radio, print and television
ads also feature Mr. Lynch’s name. “He’s misusing
hundreds of thousands of dollars in members’ money,”
Mr. Barnett complained. For 46 months he’s had a chance to
work on this. Now, two weeks before the election, it’s the
most important thing he’s gotta deal with.”
Mr. Lynch is all business in an interview, deflecting questions
about how the presidency has changed him to return to his campaign
message that Team Lynch has changed the union for the better.
His term, he said, “was the busiest four years in the history
of the New York City PBA. We faced more issues than any other administration
all at once. We’ve spoken to every living president of the
PBA and every one of them said there’s never been so many
issues that were so important to the membership all at one time.
The union waged its contract arbitration fight at the same time
that it coped with the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist
attacks, which took the lives of 23 NYPD officers.
Aligned With UFA
Near the end of the arbitration process, Mr. Lynch formed an alliance
with Stephen J. Cassidy, the newly elected president of the United
Firefighters’ Association, who like Mr. Lynch had leapt from
the rank and file to the apex of his union.
A rally the two presidents convened near Times Square last summer
drew a crowd of thousands, including many firefighters. The event
was a protest against an arbitrator’s proposal that would
have had cops work shorter tours and show up for 10 additional days
each year to get a larger raise. The proposal was dropped from the
final award.
Mr. Barnett believes the rally was little more than a sideshow.
By taking so long to resolve the PERB court fight and the arbitration,
he argues, the PBA allowed the United Federation of Teachers to
sign a contract which established the principle that municipal employees
must be prepared to work longer hours – the Teachers added
20 minutes to their work day – for greater pay.
Mr. Lynch counters that the UFA soon after negotiated an agreement
that mirrored the raise pattern of the PBA deal, and shared the
virtue of being six months shorter than the 30-month contracts accepted
by other uniformed unions. “We broke the pattern,” the
PBA leader said.
Different Priorities
The arbitration panel’s award, issued last September, included
an additional 1.5 percent in funds that the city wanted to devote
to raising the pay of Police Officers at the start of their careers.
The PBA fought to place approximately half of the total in longevity
payments for veteran cops.
The UFA favored younger members when it divvied up its 1.5 percent,
which Mr. Barnett emphasizes in his campaign stops. Firefighters
in their third year on the job now make 2 percent more than cops,
he says.
Mr. Lynch makes no apologies for the PBA’s decision. “We
have to represent all our members, whether you have one day on the
job or 20 years on the job,” he said.
Firing back at his opponent, Mr. Lynch said Mr. Barnett failed
to attend any of the PERB arbitration hearings, despite his status
as a trustee on full excusal from his duties as a police officer.
“He never once set foot in that room. Not once."
Mr. Barnett said he grew disgusted with the union’s strategy
in November 2001 after Mr. Lynch proposed that arbitrators give
the PBA the 10 percent offered to the uniformed unions, but with
a “market differential” attached. By acknowledging the
pattern, Mr. Barnett argued, “he lowered his demand, just
two months after 9/11.”
Among its other conflicts with the city, the PBA has faced a department
newly sensitized to the embarrassment of prisoner escapes, which
have become a staple of media reports on crime in the city. Commanders
have taken to suspending officers for 30 days if they are found
at fault in an escape.
‘NYPD Shifts Blame’
Mr. Barnett sees this as a PBA failure, but Mr. Lynch contends
few cops stay out for the full month. “We get them back ahead
of time, but it’s glamorous for my opponent to say that and
point at that,” he said. “Management is not training
and equipping us properly to deal with this problem, and they’re
trying to divert attention from this by saying it’s the individual
police officer’s fault.”
As the date for releasing the ballots neared, Mr. Lynch took his
entire slate to an afternoon muster at the headquarters of Transit
District 2 near Canal Street. (The district is the home turf of
Mr. Zink, the union’s recording secretary, who is a former
delegate for the unit.)
After roll call, at least 30 cops crowded into a narrow underground
room. They appeared to listen intently as the union officers gave
updates on a new overtime lawsuit, the move toward arbitration by
the Detectives’ union and the latest on legislation in Albany.
‘Make Educated Choice’
At one point Mr. Lynch paused to apologize for speaking quickly
before continuing to dole out information. “I mean no disrespect,”
he said.
“When you get that ballot, I’m asking you to make an
educated decision,” Mr. Lynch concluded. “Did we do
all the things we said we were going to do the last time we came
through here? When my opponent comes here, hold his feet to the
fire, too.”
When Mr. Lynch asked for questions, Pedro Rodriguez, a cop with
19 ½ years in the district, raised his hand. “I have
a comment,” he said. “I think you’ve done a great
job. I think you’re going to be around for a while.”
|
