Razzle Dazzle: Uniformed Jobs Cast Adrift

Razzle Dazzle

Uniformed Jobs Cast Adrift

By RICHARD STEIER

It is becoming increasingly clear that Jay Waks, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association representative on the arbitration panel that decided that union's last contract 14 months ago, was prophetic about its impact on NYPD recruitment.

He wrote in a 39-page brief that amounted to an extended gripe, "While I concurred, figuratively at the point of a gun, in an award that avoided the uncertainty of the more draconian permanent cuts, the City's insistence on these salaries for future hires will backfire."

That much has become evident with the Bloomberg administration's difficulty in filling its two police classes this year while offering starting pay of $25,100 and an overall first-year salary of $28,900. Any thought that this was a momentary blip on the radar was banished when filing for the most recent Police Officer test in June was 26 percent below what it had been a year earlier, before the drastic cuts in both salary and the pay scale for new officers took effect with the arbitration award.

A Ripple in Correction

What Mr. Waks didn't predict, but has clearly materialized, is the impact the PBA award, with its ripple effect on other uniformed union bargaining, has had on the Correction Department.

TIME TO RECALCULATE?: While the long-term savings the city will realize from cuts in starting pay for new hires and promotees in uniformed agencies are a salve for future budget problems, Mayor Bloomberg must decide whether they are really worth it if recent recruitment problems continue. The number of candidates who passed the January exam for Correction Officer - a few months after the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association accepted similarly drastic cuts in salary and the pay scale in order to win the same two 5-percent raises for incumbents that were awarded to PBA members - was just 64 percent of what it had been for the June 2005 test.

This suggests a fall-off in the caliber of those taking the exam, with the cuts in compensation the most likely explanation.

Any notion that this was not related to salary should be dispelled by the problems Correction is having getting Correction Officers to take the promotion exam for Captain, with recently concluded filing down by 1,000 candidates compared to two years ago for the previous test. The obvious reason for the drop-off is that the reduced pay scale for Captains that was also a consequence of that PBA award has meant that a promotion offers far more in extra responsibility than it does in takehome pay - in fact, there will be a brief period between now and November when veteran Correction Officers will make more than newly promoted Captains.

Coupled with the NYPD's recruiting struggles, it indicates that the PBA contract award, which seemed a financial boon to the city because of its impact on all uniformed jobs in terms of recurring savings at the expense of future hires and promotees, has offered up a side-effect that is the equivalent of acid reflux.

It was born of two clashing imperatives: PBA President Pat Lynch's desire to get sizable pay raises for incumbent cops that could close the salary gap with their suburban counterparts, and Mayor Bloomberg's determination to offset the impact of such increases by sharply cutting pay for future hires. These became the elements that, slapped together without much thought for their reverberation by the arbitration panel chairman, Eric Schmertz, have left the Police and Correction Departments struggling to find new officers.

In an interview the day after his June 28, 2005 arbitration award, Mr. Schmertz acknowledged that he hadn't considered its impact on the NYPD's ability to recruit, saying, "My focus was totally on what it would do to the salary structure for the incumbents."

That would naturally have been Mr. Lynch's focus, too, since his political future depended on getting a deal that veteran cops would like. Whether it should have been the primary consideration for Mr. Schmertz is another story.

Money-Wise, Operationally Foolish

He noted in his award that as one of the original members of the Board of Collective Bargaining, he was well aware of how a generous award for one uniformed group could dramatically increase the city's costs for other unions as well. What Mr. Schmertz didn't pay enough attention to was the impact that an award that benefited incumbents at the expense of prospective employees - often known as "the unborn" - could turn into a logistical nightmare for the other uniformed unions and city agencies that would indirectly be affected.

He said at the time that one advantage of his award was that it covered a contract period that had already expired, so if the reduced pay scale for new cops severely affected recruiting, it could be addressed soon after such evidence was provided in the form of the January 2006 police class. That theory assumed, however, that if the worst fears came to pass, the PBA and the Bloomberg administration would be on the same page, in terms of both urgency and how to solve the problem, to swiftly agree on a solution.

That hasn't been the case. The city has actually made two contract offers over the past three months, the second of which would boost first-year salary for new cops by $10,000 over the split-level present pay of $28,900, without getting even a formal response from the PBA.

Mr. Lynch's feelings about the offer could be gauged by what he said after last year's arbitration when asked why he would allow Mr. Waks to sign off on an award that cut starting pay to an embarrassing level. Echoing Mr. Waks's viewpoint, the PBA leader said the alternative city proposal - keeping the old salary structure but having future cops work 18 more days because of relinquished vacation days and holidays and a reduced night differential - was even less palatable.

Not Much Better Off

In terms of time off, the city's most recent proposal affecting new hires is just a marginal improvement: 16 lost vacation days and holidays compared to incumbents. And the new starting salary would represent an increase of less than 6 percent over the pre-arbitration award level of $36,658 - far below the rate of inflation for the four-year period that would be covered by the two contracts.

It could be argued that Mr. Lynch sacrificed his unborn on the altar of his short-term political needs when he allowed Mr. Waks to sign off on an arbitration award that the PBA was heavily involved in structuring. But as one veteran cop noted shortly after the award was issued, "I feel bad for the guys that are gonna be coming on the job. But it's not the PBA's responsibility to recruit; it's the Police Department's."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has termed the current starting pay "a disgrace," has made clear his feelings about its impact on the department's hiring goals. Correction Commissioner Martin Horn has been more philosophical, saying that his agency must live with the realities of the reduced pay and would seek to impress upon recruits the long-term rewards of a job that allowed some COs to earn in excess of $100,000 a year with overtime, not to mention providing a strong package of fringe benefits.

Need to Stress Positives

Correction Officers' Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook also downplayed the impact of the reduced salary scale on the quality of applicants for the job, saying through a spokesman that department officials "need to concentrate on their recruiting techniques. In running a business, you have to market it as effectively as possible to attract customers."

Part of the calculus that entered into the PBA award was that the starting pay still was a couple of thousand dollars above the salary for new cops in Nassau County. But the reduced pay scale that accompanied the lower starting rate quickly leaves new cops far behind their colleagues in Nassau, who within 18 months after joining that department have their salaries jump more than $20,000.

Nassau's experience has made clear that officers - including more than a few who made the jump from the NYPD - are willing to tolerate a miserly starting rate if they quickly see their pay significantly increase. The trouble with the NYPD pay scale is that the progression is relatively small until new officers mark their 5-1/2-year anniversary with a bump of more than $15,000 to top pay of $59,588. That maximum is about $23,000 below what Nassau cops at top pay received during the same contract year ending in mid-2004.

That gap - which does not include the wage increases Nassau cops have gotten under a contract that by next year will boost maximum salary to about $94,000 - is juxtaposed against an increasing and more complex workload for police officers that reflects both a cut in the size of the NYPD over the past five years and its growing efforts against terrorist threats.

Pointed to Productivity

During a phone interview a year ago, Mr. Waks said those expanded duties and the continuing drop in crime citywide were evidence "of incredible productivity shown by the cops. And the workload and uncertainties of police work have skyrocketed."

The Correction Department's mission has not vastly changed over the same period, yet it, too, is struggling to recruit new blood and find new Captains among those already in the work force, because of the reduced starting salary and pay scales.

Mr. Bloomberg, whose businessman's approach to running the city has worked so well that one of his Deputy Mayors has been talking him up as a possible candidate for President in 2008, recently had some of the luster chipped from his image when he thanked Con Edison President Kevin Burke for his efforts in dealing with a blackout that at the time was still afflicting northwest Queens.

Where the Mayor viewed it as a public show of support for an embattled chief executive who had become an easy target for other elected officials, others concluded that the blackout was a consequence of Mr. Burke neglecting to maintain and upgrade equipment because doing so offered no direct benefit to shareholders of the company's stock.

Saved Plenty, At a Price

That tension between delivering services well and keeping costs down is also a constant in the city's dealings with its unions. The PBA award - and even the union's decision to go to arbitration - was influenced by the April 2004 contract Mr. Bloomberg reached with District Council 37. That deal, at a time before the city's coffers were flush, was cheap enough to establish a rough pattern that figures heavily into the budget surplus of more than $5 billion for the fiscal year that concluded June 30.

But the ripple effect on the PBA contract, and all the uniformed deals that have followed in its wake, has devalued the career paths in agencies like the NYPD and Correction because of reduced pay scales for those promoted into supervisory titles.

It remains to be seen what impact this will have on filing for supervisory promotion exams in the uniformed agencies, now that virtually all those unions have accepted reduced pay scales. The one conspicuous exception is the Lieutenants' Benevolent Association, which opted to have new members work more days while softening the blow by winning the right to an experiment with longer work days, which could eventually reduce the number of tours for everybody in the rank.

An impact Mr. Schmertz said he never considered, and which the city wasn't sufficiently alarmed about at the time, has already reached the stage - as evidenced by its efforts to raise starting pay for cops - where the Bloomberg administration feels impelled to act. The non-cooperation of the PBA in making adjustments on his terms and timetable has left the Mayor wrestling with the equivalent of turning around an ocean liner while it begins to take on water.

Editor's "Razzle Dazzle" Column RSS feed