PERB Hearing

Arbitrator Dates:	March 18, 19, and 20, 2002
Arbitrators:	Dana Eischen — Neutral Ronald Dunn — PBA Pick Gary Dellaverson — City Pick
PBA Law Firm:	Kaye Scholer, LLP
City Law Firm:	Proskauer Rose, LLP

This first session was for Comparability and Pattern Bargaining.

March 18, 2002

• PBA) — Opened Hearing with NYPD "Heroes" video

• (PBA) — Robert Linn (PBA Lead Negotiator) testified to multi-jurisdictional and historical analysis of police officer compensation locally and across the nation, pattern bargaining, market-based adjustments in pay, consumer price index (CPI) and its effect on police salaries across the nation. N.Y. Civ. Serv. Law Sec. 209.4(c) vs. N.Y.C. Admin. Code Sec. 12-311c(3).

• (PBA) — Professor David B. Lipsky and Professor Harry C. Katz
  
  

  David B. Lipsky is Professor, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University and Director of the Institute on Conflict Resolution. He served as Dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations from 1988 to 1997. He is co-editor of Labor Management Relations in Government Employment at the Dawn of the 21st Century, forthcoming, Illinois University Press. He received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1967.

  Harry C. Katz is the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University. He held a joint faculty appointment in the Economics Department and Sloan School of Management at MIT from 1977 to 1985 before moving to Cornell University. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977. His PhD thesis examined the determination of municipal employee pay and city budgets in the city of San Francisco.

  
  Professors Lipsky and Katz testified jointly on the appropriate adjustment of police compensation to address inter-city differences in cost of living using the index that they developed in reliance on Bureau of Labor Statistics data that city police officers are grossly underpaid in relation to a variety of comparators, that reliance on pattern bargaining generally is declining, particularly where imposition of a lockstep pattern would lead to pay inequities as it would for N.Y.C. police officers, and NYPD retention and recruitment difficulties.
  
  

• (PBA) — Eva Jacobs  (Labor Economist)
  
  

  Ms. Jacobs has a B.A. in economics from Brooklyn College and, over the years, has taken a variety of graduate courses in statistics, econometrics and survey methodology at George Washington University. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has served on the Board of Directors of the Association. She also has been co-chairman of the economics section of the Washington Statistical Association. From 1972 to 1993, Ms. Jacobs was Chief of the Division of Consumer Expenditure Surveys of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. As such, Ms. Jacobs was responsible for the conversion of the Surveys from a decennial activity to an ongoing project. The Surveys collect information from 5000 households annually, including expenditures, demographic and geographic information. From 1972 to 1982, Ms. Jacobs also was responsible for the BLS Family Budget Program, which was an estimate of the cost of an adequate standard of living for a U.S. urban working family in various cities using hypothetical family budgets. Between 1997 and 2001, Ms. Jacobs was the editor of annual editions of the Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics, published by Bernan Press, which contains historical data for most of the statistical series produced by the BLS. Currently, Ms. Jacobs is Senior Advisor to the Safe Harbor Working Group, which consists of representatives of Federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands who, together with representatives of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, were responsible for recommending a methodology for determining the cost-of-living adjustment for the salaries of these employees. Ms. Jacobs is the neutral member and chair of the tripartite Technical Advisory Committee, which provides technical assistance to the full group and assists OPM in implementing the recommended methodology. Ms. Jacobs also has acted as adviser and expert consultant to other government agencies and private groups, all on the necessity for, the feasibility of, the methodology of, and the construction of price indices. For 5 years, she has been a consultant to Linn & Green Consulting, Inc. whose President, Robert Linn, was the PBA's first witness. In fact, there can be no dispute as to Ms. Jacobs's expertise as she was the City's expert on the subject of inter-city cost-of-living differences in the 1996-97 impasse proceeding between the City and the PBA to set the terms of the PBA's collective bargaining agreement for the period August 1, 1995 - July 31, 2000.

  Ms. Jacobs testified in support of the methodology and calculation of the Lipsky/Katz inter-city cost-of-living index and that inter-city cost-of-living must be taken into account. 

In total, the first day's testimony took approximately 12 hours.

March 19, 2002

• (PBA) — Eli B. Silverman, PhD, Professor at John Jay College, Department of Law and Police Science testified about pay discrepancies, NYC police officers leaving for better paying jobs, attitude of NYC police officers devalued feelings leading to low morale.

• (PBA) — Former 1st Deputy Police Commissioner John Timoney, testified on a wide range of police topics: Police department tactics, strategy, culture, stress on police officers, pay, tourism, comparisons with other police departments, regional, national and world wide, recruitment and retention problems facing the NYPD.

• (CITY) — City began the presentation with opening statements from their Attorney Carol O'Blenes       consisting of,  but not limited to, the following topics: pattern bargaining, pay parity, cost effects that the PBA's proposal would have on city finances.

• CITY) — Deputy Mayor Marc V. Shaw read a prepared statement touching on a range of topics that covered, but was not limited to, city budget gaps, budget reduction proposal, elimination of 1,600 uniformed positions through attrition and the hiring of 800 lower-paid civilians who will assume clerical and maintenance work now being done by police officers and the proposed borrowing of $1.5 billion to cover current operating costs, and pattern bargaining.

• CITY) — Pamela S. Silverblatt, First Deputy Commissioner New York City Office of Labor Relations read from a prepared report and used PowerPoint visual graphics, spoke on several topics including police officer benefits, comparisons with other police departments, retirement benefits and health benefits.

In total, the second day's testimony took approximately 12 hours.

March 19, 2002

• (CITY) — James Hanley, Commissioner New York City Office of Labor Relations: PowerPoint presentation, spoke on several issues regarding, but not limited to, the history of police contract negotiations, pattern bargaining, pay parity and the parity wars, the deviation of pattern bargaining would result in nuclear meltdown of labor negotiations, overtime, retirements, variable supplement fund, I.T.H.P. benefit, pension tiers, and other N.Y.C. employment benefits.

• (CITY) — Chief of Personnel, James Lawrence (who was just hired as new Police Commissioner for Nassau County) read from a prepared statement that there was no problem with police officer morale, recruitment and retention. And in response to cross examination, agreed that New York City police officers are the best trained and finest police officers anywhere and stated "they should be paid as much as the city could possibly pay them."

•       (CITY) — Commissioner Gary McCarthy read from a prepared statement concerning COMPSTAT Program, supervisors responsible for implementing police department initiatives, police officers responsible for being proactive to achieve COMPSTAT goals. In response to cross examination, he stated that a police officer's job is "Labor Intensive" and that he believes that "officers should be paid as best we possibly can."

In total, the third day's testimony took approximately nine hours.