To All Delegates and Members

New York State Public Employment Relations Board
80 Wolf Road, Albany, New York 12205-2604

Phone: (518) 457-2676: Fax: (518) 457-2664

FOR RELEASE: IMMEDIATE

E-mail: Info@perb.state.ny.us
Website: www.perb.state.ny.us

The New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) today announced the appointment of Alan R. Viani of Dobbs Ferry to mediate the ongoing contract dispute between the City of New York and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of the City of New York, Inc. (PBA). The City and the PBA, which represents the City’s 26,500 police officers, are negotiating a contract to succeed one that expired on July 31, 2000. The PBA declared impasse with PERB in December of last year, but the matter had been stayed since that time due to litigation stemming from State legislation giving PERB, rather than the New York City Office of Collective Bargaining, jurisdiction over this, and related matters.

A member of PERB’s mediation panel since 1993, Mr. Viani has nearly forty years of labor relations and collective bargaining experience. After serving as President of the City’s social services employees union in the mid-60’s, he became Director of Research and Negotiations for AFSCME District Council 37, during which time he negotiated hundreds of contracts, and played a key role in labor’s agreement to invest pension funds in City bonds, which helped save the City from bankruptcy in the late seventies. In 1985, Mr. Viani became Deputy Chairman for Dispute Resolution with the City’s Office of Collective Bargaining, mediating and arbitrating disputes between the City and its police, fire and other municipal unions until his retirement at the end of 1992. Since 1993, he has been engaged in the fulltime private practice of mediation, fact-finding and arbitration.

In making the appointment, Richard A. Curreri, PERB’s Director of Conciliation, stated:

“Al Viani may well have greater familiarity with the problems and needs of labor and management in the City of New York than does any other neutral. The wealth of experience he has both as a negotiator and mediator with uniformed service and other metropolitan area bargaining units certainly should help to get talks between the City and the PBA back on track.”