n Sept. 5, 2002, exactly one day after the last PERB award was handed down, the PBA began preparing for the next round. First, we immediately sent the city a Request-to-Bargain, a formality required before negotiations can begin. Simultaneously, we began a meticulous critique of the 2000-2002 round, identifying thoughts and strategies to improve results in the upcoming round. All the professionals who assisted the PBA were evaluated and adjustments made. Then, the PBA board created and critiqued a list of demands. It then presented this list to the Contract Committee, made up of up to 40 PBA delegates, no fewer than two from each borough, and they evaluated and modified it even further.

Throughout these early stages of the process, we had to keep recent history in mind. While PBA believes that the best way to reach a settlement is through collective bargaining, there was no reason to believe the city would deviate from the strategy they had employed for well over the past decade: Get another union to settle for an amount unacceptable to our membership and then try to force the deal down the PBA’s throat. That strategy has worked well for the city in the past — see comparisons between the PBA contract and DC 37’s in Pat Lynch’s column on page 2. In the 2000-2002 round, the city offered the PBA next to nothing at the table, then tried to impose on us in arbitration the settlement that had been made by a coalition of other uniformed unions. The city also tried to have the arbritrator impose on us 10 additional work days per year. (The PERB panel ultimately rejected that proposal.) We were ready for similar tactics this time but didn’t anticipate that another municipal union would settle for a zero in a period of relative fiscal prosperity. That unexpected development signaled that the round would be a tough one despite the favorable cards we were holding, including the increasingly robust economy and strengthening city budget, our police officers’ continued stellar performance with declining manpower, generous police contract settlements locally and around the country, and the significant disparity between our salaries and those of other departments.

Nevertheless, in seven negotiating sessions from the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004, the city refused to budge from its unacceptable offer of the core civilian package of 0%, 3% and 1% over three years. And the city stubbornly stuck to this position during mediation sessions in June and July of last year.

Against this background, the PERB arbitration began in November 2004 and continued with 14 hearings and other argument dates, plus a period of submission of briefs, until March 2005 when the formal proceedings ended.

In the period that followed, PERB panel chairman Eric Schmertz undertook informal “mediation” efforts that he insisted would not prejudice either party if a resolution couldn’t be reached that way. Believing that under PERB he was limited to a two-year award, Schmertz tried to fashion a four-year deal agreed to by both parties giving police officers a 20% raise at 5% a year. The PBA argued that, since the record clearly showed a wide pay disparity between the PBA and other police groups, the 20% should be awarded free and clear and that our police officers should be given additional amounts for productivity from the reduced head count and terrorism workload. When the city continued to insist on a new 25-year retirement pension tier, 10 additional work days per year and other painful concessions, including the loss of existing members’ vacation days and draconian give-backs from the so-called unborn, the 20% deal was dead.

Arbritrator Schmertz next moved into the decisional phase. While he believed the PBA deserved the 20%, he wouldn’t award it in a two-year deal, believing that it would be “fiscally irresponsible to do so.”

So where did the new salary schedule for new hires come from?

Arbritrator Schmertz advised the panel that he had drafted an award that provided 5% and 5% for the incumbent police officers over two years, with the loss of a personal leave day and five additional reschedules. Arbritrator Schmertz considered the five new reschedules meaningless since the city uses an average of less than five of the 10 afforded them in the 1991 PBA arbitration. He seems to have truly believed that, with the 5% and 5% and healthy retroactive payments for incumbent officers, he was providing our unit what no other arbitrator would, based on comparisons to the awards by arbitrators who decided past PBA contract disputes.

But, as for future recruits, arbritrator Schmertz initially proposed terms far more onerous than what he finally came up with: ten fewer vacation days, eight fewer paid holidays, 45% of current night differential pay for the rest of their careers, a new academy rate and 5 1/2 years to top pay.

We made it clear that such terms were unheard of in any department around the country and would endanger the health and safety of these officers by allowing them so few vacation days. Policing requires officers to work weekends and holidays. Unlike other professionals, police officers need vacation days just to attend family events and other occasions that typically occur on weekends. Arbritrator Schmertz’s proposal effectively afforded only ten vacation days to new police officers and 17 days to senior officers — less than civilian city employees. Plus, it would require 10 extra days of patrol, something the city really wants. Given the dramatic disparity in pay between New York City and other jurisdictions and the recruiting and retention crisis, what evidence in the record supported such an outcome?

Despite our protests, the arbitrator wouldn’t back off adjustments for new hires. Instead, he asked the city to come up with a salary scenario for the unborn that would produce the same savings produced by the terrible changes included in his initial proposal. The city came up with the salary schedule included in the final award. Even then, the arbitrator threatened to impose the vacation, holiday and night shift differential and other reductions instead of the reduced salary schedule if the PBA didn’t sign on to the award. After long late-night deliberations and other considerations, PBA leaders decided that it could not allow the PBA’s perennial benefit structure to be destroyed and expose future members to the health, safety and family issues that would undoubtedly accompany vacation limits of 10 and 17 days. Also, a protracted legal battle would deny our current members income owed them for an unconscionable period.

With that, the arbitrator issued the award. While it was certainly not what police officers deserved and much less than the evidence showed, it continues to move our members closer to the compensation in other jurisdictions. The arbitrator also issued the best opinion the PBA has ever received and probably the most detailed and helpful interpretation explaining how Taylor Law standards differ from those under the old New York City collective bargaining laws. Arbritrator Schmertz also concluded more than once that police officers deserved 20% over 4 years. We hope to use that as the starting point in the next round.

We hope this award and opinion will inspire the city to take meaningful steps to make New York City police officers the highest paid in the country, which arbritrator Schmertz concluded is where we rightfully belong. We also hope his words will inspire the city and others to abandon the one-size-fits-all collective bargaining concept.

On the day after this award was handed down, the PBA again formally requested in writing that the city begin the next round of bargaining. As arbritrator Schmertz wrote in his opinion, “...Over the almost 50 years that I have practiced as an arbitrator in labor management disputes and as a labor relations practitioner in which I have heard and decided some 10,000 grievance cases and dozens of interest cases in New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Haven, and Philadelphia, none have been as comprehensive, as detailed and as well tried as this instant matter.” We hope to bring the same quality to the next round.