PATRICK J. LYNCH: Mayor shortchanges cops.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association Dec. 19 launched a new offensive in its bid to pressure Mayor de Blasio for contract terms exceeding the citywide pattern, running a 30-second TV ad accusing him of “hypocrisy” for his tough line on both wages and health benefits.
The spot, which will run through Dec. 28 on the newscasts of seven local stations, states that the Mayor “gave himself a 15-percent raise and up to 60-percent raises to his aides, but refused to pay Police Officers a market wage.” It goes on to say that he “berates corporations for mistreating employees, but wants to cut health benefits that city workers’ families depend upon.”
That is a reference to Mr. de Blasio’s efforts, during both rounds of collective bargaining since he took office in 2014, to secure health-benefit savings in the face of rising costs. The Municipal Labor Committee, which bargains on health care on behalf of all city unions, has agreed to steps that have produced billions of dollars in savings without causing employees much pain, including encouraging use of local health clinics while reducing members’ emergency-room visits, and promoting wellness programs.
The PBA, however, has objected to going along with those measures, although it eventually did so for contracts covering a seven-year period that also spanned the final term of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Its last contract, reached on Jan. 31, 2017 and retroactive to the summer of 2012, expired Aug. 1 last year.
It filed for arbitration two weeks after that concerning a new pact after preliminary discussions made clear that the de Blasio administration was not willing to agree to the “market wage” that PBA President Patrick J. Lynch has insisted is necessary to bring his members up to the same salary level as other cops who work in the vicinity, particularly State Troopers who are detailed to New York City.
The Mayor has reached wage agreements with the two-largest municipal unions representing civilian employees, District Council 37 and the United Federation of Teachers, and with Teamsters Local 237 on behalf of its roughly 5,300 Housing Authority members. While the terms varied slightly in each case, the annual raises averaged slightly above 2 percent.
PBA: Too Stingy for Us
The PBA maintains raises of that amount are wholly inadequate, saying that “recent contract settlements with the New York State Troopers and the Port Authority Police Department leave PBA members with an average compensation gap of approximately 42% and 57%, respectively.”
This past summer, the state Public Employment Relations Board acknowledged that a bargaining impasse existed, paving the way for arbitration proceedings. The union, however, has delayed the start of those discussions by objecting to the city’s decision to tap Labor Commissioner Robert W. Linn as its representative on the three-man panel, which includes a union representative, Kenneth Feinberg, and the neutral chairman, John M. Donoghue. It is contending that because he worked for the PBA as its outside bargaining counsel during a contract arbitration more than 15 years ago, Mr. Linn’s presence on the panel would pose a conflict of interest.
It made similar arguments during a 2015 arbitration and they were rejected by PERB; in this instance, the union has filed a lawsuit contesting Mr. Linn’s involvement.
A spokesman for the Mayor, Raul Contreras, via a Dec. 20 email said in response to the union’s ad, “We’ve been working in good faith with the PBA to come to an agreement that is fair to police officers and taxpayers, as we did last year when we reached the second [negotiated] agreement between the City and PBA since 1995. However, the PBA decided to seek arbitration instead of joining us at the bargaining table. We’re ready to continue conversations to reach the fair contract our police officers deserve.”
City’s Standard Rationale
Mr. Linn declined comment on the ad. But he and the late James F. Hanley, who between them have been the city’s chief negotiators for most of the last 36 years under five very different Mayors, during numerous battles with the PBA contended that the city’s overall compensation package was very competitive with those provided in other cities. When the union pointed to large gaps in pay for city cops compared to those in Nassau and Suffolk counties, both negotiators would counter that the NYPD lost just a limited number of officers to those much-smaller departments.
The recently ratified contract for State Troopers, while consistent on wages with the terms the city reached with the UFT and DC 37, further widened the compensation gap between those employees who are based in the five boroughs and their NYPD counterparts, partly because of the 17 months that PBA members have been working under an expired pact.
But while other cities nationally have experienced problems in recruiting new cops, interest in the job has remained high here: 19,000 applied to take the Police Officer exam last year, and there had been 16,000 applicants in 2018 through mid-December, with that figure likely to rise before the end of the year.