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August 6, 2004
PBA Threatens To Disrupt GOP Fest Over Pact
Mediator Says Stalled Wage Talks Need Arbitration
By Mark Daly
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association’s outrage over
Mayor Bloomberg’s hardball negotiation tactics spilled into
the streets July 28 as 200 police union delegates marched around
City Hall to protest their stalled contract talks.
Stoked by chants of “Strike! Strike!” and “No
contract, no convention,” a reference to this month’s
Republican Party gathering in Manhattan, the crowd blocked the building’s
east gate at the start of its route and briefly slipped into traffic
on Broadway as marchers rounded City Hall Park.
Signs of Frustration
The unannounced protest was the latest show of force – and
frustration – by the union as its long-running contract dispute
heads toward arbitration.
“We’ve put the city on notice. You don’t know
where we’ll be!” PBA President Patrick J. Lynch shouted
to the crowd.
“No second jobs!” became another popular chant at the
rally, as officers voiced their disgust at wage patterns that the
union contends have driven cops to moonlight to pay their mortgages
and other bills.
Fire union leaders joined the PBA on the sidewalk on solidarity
against Mr. Bloomberg’s insistence that unions fund a portion
of their future raises by making cuts to other benefits. The city’s
contract proposals to all its unions this year also include a first-year
signing bonus instead of a raise.
‘We’re Not Going Away’
Two days earlier, the unions had gathered outside Madison Square
Garden to beat back on attempt by police commanders to move the
metal barriers set up outside the building as a permanent protest
pen during the preparations for the Republican National Convention
Aug. 30-Sept.2.
“What we are doing here today is not a threat, it’s
a promise. The UFA and PBA are not going away,” Uniformed
Firefighters’ Association President Stephen J. Cassidy said
outside City Hall Wednesday. “We’re not taking zeroes.
We’re not taking zeroes ever again.”
Seven fruitless meetings between the PBA, the city and a state-appointed
mediator, Alan R. Viani, have all but ensured that the police union’s
contract will be defined through binding arbitration.
Mr. Viani has sent a report to the state Public Employment Relations
Board stating that he “does not believe a mediated settlement
can be reached at this time,” a PERB official said last week.
PERB’s director of conciliation, Richard A. Curreri, was out
of town last week, but the next move is in his hands.
If Mr. Curreri concurs that the dispute is irresolvable through
mediation, the PBA and the city will begin choosing a three-member
panel that will hear their dispute and issue an award.
Both sides remain far apart on salary issues, with the PBA pushing
to bring its pay in line with colleagues at Port Authority –
one of the best-paid police forces in the region – and the
city seeking cuts in starting pay, vacation time, annuity payments,
holiday pay and even pensions.
PBA Wants 35% Hike
The PBA is seeking to raise officers’ maximum base pay of
$54,048 to $72,982, a 35-percent increase in two years. Under its
demand, officers would begin at $39,124 a year, about 13 percent
more that the current starting wage of $34,514, and climb to top
pay over a five-year period, as they do today.
The Union also wants to convert existing longevity payments and
a uniform allowance to a percentage of salary, so they would automatically
rise with each future raise.
In response, the city offered six different pay scenarios during
mediation sessions. Last month the union took the unusual step of
posting them on its Web site, branding each an “insulting
proposal.”
The city has proposed a three-year contract that offers a $1,000
cash payment up front, plus compounded raises of between 7.12 percent
and 9.18 percent, depending on what concessions the union is willing
to make to receive a raise in the contract’s final year.
The givebacks proposed by the city include shortening officers’
shifts, or tours, by 20 minutes while keeping their annual total
working hours the same. The change would require officers to make
10 additional appearances per year.
Police officers currently must be on the job 2,088 hours a year,
the equivalent of working 40-hour weeks from January through December,
plus an extra eight-hour day.
Would Set Trainee Rate
The city also wants to set a lower starting salary, or “academy
rate,” for officers still in training at the Police Academy.
The proposed salaries range from $31,100 down to $23,000 pro-rated
for the six-month training period.
The city’s pension proposal would require future police officers
and firefighters to work 25 years and reach age 50 in order to receive
a standard pension. Both uniformed forces currently have a “20-and-out”
plan with no age requirement.
Additionally, the new pension plan would require workers to contribute
a flat 5 percent of their salary, instead of an amount ranging from
4.30 percent to 8.05 percent based on age. Certain benefits that
today’s retirees enjoy – a cost-of-living adjustment,
a Variable Supplements Fund – would no longer be provided.
In its protests downtown and outside Madison Square Garden, the
PBA has loudly proclaimed its rejection of the principle laid out
by Mayor Bloomberg that unions should make concessions to fund their
raises.
‘Won’t Pay City to Work’
“They want us to come to work and write them a check,”
scoffed Mr. Lynch. He said the shorter workday had been tried and
abandoned during the city’s fiscal crisis. “They’re
suggesting a chart they threw out in 1978,” he said.
Labor Relations Commissioner James F. Hanley said the schedule
had been imposed by an arbitrator. “We didn’t walk away
from it,” he said, explaining that it remained in place until
both sides agreed to switch to the 8-hour, 35-minute tours in place
today.
The academy rate, he said, reflects the standard practice in other
law-enforcement agencies of offering lower pay to training academy
students.
“We have been willing to negotiate the police contract from
day one, Mr. Hanley added. “However, we prefer to do it at
the bargaining table, not on the Internet.” The union’s
posting of the city’s proposals, he said, “places a
chilling effect” on negotiations.
Won’t Sway Mayor
Given its chances for success, the union’s campaign is more
for internal consumption that an all-out lobbying effort, according
to a veteran political consultant.
“The probability is the Mayor will not fold,” said
Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who has assisted police
unions in Detroit and Los Angeles with labor campaigns. “There
has not been a mayor in recent memory” who has suffered defeat
at the polls “because he has a conflict with public sector
unions.”
Mr. Sheinkopf, himself a former cop, worked for Boston’s
police union in its public spat with Mayor Thomas M. Menino during
the run-up to last week’s Democratic National Convention.
After pushing for a 17-percent raise over a four-year period to
match an earlier contract with the city’s firefighters, the
Boston Police Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association received
14.5 percent in a hastily arranged binding arbitration session meant
to dissipate tensions before the convention began.
Proved Cuts Hurt
The consultant judged the union’s campaign a success, and
said it gained traction because the union was able to argue that
there had been a dangerous reduction in the size of the city’s
2,000-member uniformed force. The Boston department shrank by 131
officers, or 6.3 percent, in the last two years.
Mr. Lynch has tried the same message in New York, pointing to the
loss of 4,000 officers in the two years since Mr. Bloomberg took
office.
Last week, as he joined members at the barricades surrounding their
sidewalk protest site outside Madison Square Garden, the PBA president
pointed to recent crimes that have served as prime tabloid fodder,
including the attacks by intruders on priests in two different parishes
in as many days.
“The perps are getting bold again,” he said. “And
we’ve gone from being omnipresent to responding to 911 calls.
We’re not going to be able to effectively do our job if we
have fewer people.
‘We Can’t Recruit’
At least 1,000 officers have quit the department in mid-career
to seek better paying jobs elsewhere, Mr. Lynch charged. “Other
departments do not have a recruiting problem. The NYPD does,”
he said.
In New York, however, “it’s not penetrating,”
said Mr. Sheinkopf, because overall crime statistics remain at historic
lows. “The fact is, there’s no crisis. If there were
a crime crisis, the general public would be-more interested.”
The joint police-firefighter-Teacher picket line outside Madison
Square Garden will have little impact, the consultant estimated,
because “Republicans care less about union picket lines than
Democrats do.”
“I’m not being critical of these guys. They have to
show the membership that they’re fighting,” Mr. Sheinkopf
added. “The fight is as important, in many ways, as the outcome.
Not Expecting the Moon
Cops, firefighters and other public safety workers “generally
expect they’re not going to get what they want,” he
said, so they may be forgiving, or at least cynical, when an eventual
deal fails to meet expectations.
That attitude doesn’t let a union leader off the hook, however,
Mr. Sheinkopf said a leader’s reputation can suffer “if
they’re not fighting, if they’re not taking it on the
chin.
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