... on the recently-completed testimony phase of this bargaining round’s PERB arbitration process, in which our case is even stronger than it was in the last round when PERB panel chairman Eric Schmertz called the PBA’s presentation among the best he’d ever seen in his decades long career in labor relations.

The PBA’s witnesses were a remarkable group, including economists and educators, law enforcement experts and community leaders, politicians and retired NYPD bosses. They provided an unusually diverse set of perspectives, but on one point they all agreed:

New York City police officers need and have earned a substantial salary increase that is independent of any pattern the city has established with other municipal unions.

And then there was the city’s first witness, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who agreed that cops have done their jobs very well but added that he saw no reason to reward PBA members when they’ve remained productive even while their headcount and salary are down. But more about Bloomberg’s testimony later.

Among the compelling PBA witnesses was Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell Institute of Labor Relations and professor of collective bargaining. Discussing comparative police salaries, locally and nationally, Prof. Katz cited

several authoritative sources that showed that in 2004 New York City police officers were paid 25.1% less than average and 35.1% less in 2006. Adjusted for cost of living, those numbers jump to 30.2% and 39.55%. Also, he pointed out that New York City police salaries are 88% of those in the surrounding suburbs while in other urban cities officers are paid more than their average suburban counterparts.

Prof. Katz added that the city’s onthe- table offer would do nothing to solve the salary problem and its adverse impact on recruitment and retention because it doesn’t even equal cost-of-living increases. He also noted that 16 of the 20 jurisdictions he surveyed gave officers extra compensation for college credits.

New York State Senator Eric Adams also testified on the police-salary issue. In the community he represents, he said, ordinary citizens and even police critics agree that New York City police officers deserve higher salaries. They don’t want the recruitment-and-retention crisis to so deplete the NYPD ranks that their neighborhoods revert to the bad old days of high crime and unsafe streets.

Mayor Bloomberg

IN HIS INSULTING TESTIMONY, Mayor Bloomberg spouted the usual nonsense about pattern bargaining having “served (the city) so well” since the 1970s fiscal crisis and the city’s multibillion- dollar budget surpluses are not surpluses at all but insurance against future shortfalls. He praised the work of the NYPD for its crime-reduction accomplishments and for making New York the safest big city in the nation but then made the incredible claim that there is no NYPD recruitment and retention crisis and that he and the police commissioner made a "CONSCIOUS DECISION" TO REDUCE THE HEADCOUNT TO SAVE MONEY.

He went on to boast about how our officers have succeeded in reducing crime with fewer cops and the additional antiterrorism burden. If you can continue to get the desired results with a lower workforce, he smugly reasoned, you can assume compensation is fair.

Can you believe this? Our members continue to do the job while stretched thin over most commands, and our mayor claims that his compensation policies are working.

Asked on cross-examination what it would cost the city to give police officers 1% more than the other settlements, he refused to answer directly, saying the city would be forced to give the same to other unions at a total cost of a quarter of a billion dollars. Pressed for the answer for what the cost would be just for police officers, he arrogantly and defiantly refused to answer, saying he knew the figure but would not share it.

PBA: "You're not going to tell me whether or not you know what it would cost for the PBA?"

Bloomberg: "Sure I do."

PBA: "What is it?"

Bloomberg: "I'm not going to tell you because it's a nonsensical number."

Remember, this is the same mayor who recently urged substantial raises for the city’s judges, arguing that “many excellent candidates” for the judiciary “may not have applied” for the position “because the salary isn’t competitive.” Excuse me for pointing out that this the identical argument we’re making in our contract battle and, for us, he takes the opposite point of view.

Shouldn’t that argument also be true for the frontline troops in the all-important area of public safety and anti-terrorism?

As Mayor Bloomberg points out, the city knows that our police officers will continue to reduce crime at record rates and that the city will take full advantage of this and not adequately compensate us.

The bottom line here is, under Bloomberg’s theory of bargaining, we are the victims of our own success.

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, now the Police Chief in Los Angeles, also took the PBA’s side. He called New York City “arguably the most significant terrorist target in the United States,” recalled how he had increased the hiring age and the educational requirements (to 60 college credits) and said that other city jobs don’t compare with police work.

Please stand by. An in-depth and comprehensive newsletter describing the testimony by numerous witnesses in our lengthy PERB proceedings will be out shortly.

“New York City has to be the only city in America where sanitation workers are compared to police officers,” he said. “They’re totally different lines of work.”

He also pointed out that the “only losers in the economic boom of the 1990s were cops.” And while he acknowledged to reporters later that, when he was New York City’s commissioner, he had supported Giuliani’s resistance to giving cops significant raises but that was because he was told that “when the city’s financial status was better, they’d be compensated.” That promise was never fulfilled. Asked on cross-examination how he resolved the attrition crisis in Los Angeles, he responded with an answer his questioner didn’t expect or want to hear: He did so, he said, by paying double New York City’s starting salary and by negotiating contracts that paid all his officers competitively with surrounding communities.