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Salute to Civil Service Organization Month |
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Tap Co-Author Of Taylor Law
To Head PERB;
A Founding Father Mr. Lefkowitz, 76, served as the first head of the three-member board for 19 years prior to retiring in 1987. Since then he has worked as general counsel for the Civil Service Employees' Association. Mr. Schmertz was the chair of the 2005 Patrolmen's Benevolent Association arbitration panel, which created much controversy by sharply reducing the starting pay for new cops. The new board, which must be approved by the State Senate, will likely help move along the stalled arbitration proceedings between the Bloomberg administration and the PBA.
City: Let's Move Along On Feb. 2, the Bloomberg administration sued PERB, seeking to force the agency to designate Mr. Zach the chairperson to handle the contract. "Although we are pleased that the Governor has appointed members to fill these vacancies, we continue to believe that the staff of PERB has the authority to select an arbitration panel so we can finally move the process forward and get our Police Officers a much-deserved raise," said Stu Loeser, Mayor Bloomberg's chief spokesman, in a statement issued last week. Mr. Lefkowitz said he decided to return to chair PERB because he wanted a change and believed the prior board was misinterpreting the guidelines set out in the Taylor Law. "I guess 20 years on any job is enough to say I've done it," he remarked during a Feb. 13 phone interview. "It's time to do something else; new challenges ring the fire bell."
PBA Prefers PERB In 1998, the PBA convinced the State Legislature to give it the right to move the binding arbitration process from OCB's jurisdiction to PERB's. The PBA has long believed that PERB is a more advantageous forum to present its case for a sizable salary increase than the city's Board of Collective Bargaining. Mr. Lefkowitz's nomination comes as many city and state public-employee unions have proposed making far-reaching changes to the Taylor Law. They have complained over the past several years that the measure is biased against workers. They contend that the law, which can be changed only by the State Legislature, allowed Mayor Bloomberg after he first took office to delay contract negotiations for years to strengthen his hand with city workers desperate for a wage increase. "I think that some of the things that they have asked for are likely to be meritorious," Mr. Lefkowitz said, referring to the union proposals. "And that one of the things that I will have to do is look at them with a critical eye to decide whether or not PERB should support any of them." But he declined to discuss any of the specific suggestions. "Obviously it wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on these items until I have an opportunity to evaluate them carefully," he remarked. Unions Like Choice His nomination has broad union support. "He's very experienced in this," remarked State AFL-CIO President Denis M. Hughes during a Feb. 14 phone interview. "It's really a departure from the way the board operates now. One of the main criticisms of the board was that it ignored precedent and didn't give the full weight to previous decisions." Mr. Lefkowitz's selection was also well-received by Randi Weingarten, the chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee. "He is one of the foremost experts on the Taylor Law and is someone who knows that law inside and out," said Ms. Weingarten, who as president of the United Federation of Teachers also uses PERB to help resolve contract disputes. "And everyone who actually knows that law knows that it needs to be changed to level the playing field ... right now it functions in favor of [management] and not in favor of workers." The CSEA hailed Mr. Lefkowitz's appointment as well. "Jerry's experience, integrity and high ethical standards are unparalleled," said CSEA President Danny Donohue. "He is respected by labor and management alike, and he will bring credibility to the process of labor relations and raise the bar for fairness here in New York." As for Taylor Law reform, the UFT has suggested that all municipal workers' raises at least equal increases in the cost of living. Under that plan, any unions that want additional raises or benefits would be required to negotiate a way to fund them with the city. City's Objections But two arguments could be reasonably made against guaranteeing employees raises that are at least equal to rises in the cost of living. One is that such a trigger makes no provision for instances in which the city is struggling fiscally and would not be able to meet such a mandate without either laying off employees or increasing taxes. The other, which Mr. Hanley has alluded to, runs along the same lines as the claim made two decades ago by Robert W. Linn, who at the time was the city's chief negotiator, and later served as bargaining counsel to the PBA. Mr. Linn questioned the longtime practice of projecting pay raises as part of the city budget, even though such projections virtually never reflected what the actual wage hikes would be. Simply budgeting for a 2- or 3-percent hike, he argued, allowed unions to use that number as a floor from which to push upward in their bargaining. The unions have also rallied against OLR's insistence that that they conform to pattern bargaining. The PBA has contended that rule does not allow individual unions to address specific problems and needs, such as recruitment and retention issues. PBA: City Picks Weakest PBA President Patrick J. Lynch has said it allows the city to pick "the union that will settle for the lowest amount and seek to apply that settlement with little or no deviation." The Bloomberg administration has stridently opposed all the suggested changes to the Taylor Law. Last April, Mr. Hanley submitted a letter summarizing the Bloomberg administration's position to the City Council before a hearing on the issue. "The Taylor Law has been effective over the years in helping foster harmonious labor relations while simultaneously protecting both employer and employee rights," the document said. Mr. Hughes noted that any amendments to the measure must be enacted by the State Legislature. "Taylor Law reform is really a legislative effort," he said. Mr. Lefkowitz, the labor leader said, will be interpreting the present law. "I think there are two distinct avenues," Mr. Hughes added. "The Chairman of PERB is a neutral." In 1967, Mr. Lefkowitz was one of the three attorneys involved in drafting the Taylor Law, which is named after George W. Taylor, who served as Chairman of Governor Rockefeller's Committee on Public Employee Relations. Law Gave and Took The Taylor Law was one of the first comprehensive public-sector labor laws in the nation. It guarantees covered public employees the right to unionize and the ability to bargain with their employer about wages and work terms. In return, all public employees are denied the right to strike under any circumstances. Any union that breaks the law and strikes is subject to civil and criminal penalties. The Taylor Law has been revised many times over the past years, but its main conditions and policies have largely remained the same. "I think the law has proven to be very dynamic," said CSEA spokesman Stephen Madarasz. "It's the standard for public-employment law in this country. It may not be perfect, but it has the served the public and public employees very well." Remedy Needed In 2002, the New York State AFL-CIO issued a 19-page report detailing eight specific recommendations for reform. Those suggestions included providing an effective remedy when public employers are found to have refused to negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement in good faith. In a similar vein, Mr. Lynch has proposed that the city be required to pay interest on all retroactive raises. For the PBA, in five of the past six rounds of bargaining, dating back to 1991, the union's contract has been submitted to arbitration because of stalled negotiations, with only a 1994 contract reached at the bargaining table. The AFL-CIO report noted that New York leads the nation in the percentage of the work force which is unionized, in no small part due to the huge numbers of public employees who have chosen to organize under the Taylor Law. "But it cannot be claimed persuasively that the Taylor Law works simply because most of New York's public employees are unionized. That is but the beginning," the document added. The report argued that the measure does not work well or fairly in some basic respects. "The Taylor Law needs structural change if it is to be the model of enlightened and balanced labor relations policy during the 21st century that the framers originally intended," the report asserted. Sees Misinterpretation Mr. Lefkowitz said he believed the prior board had been misinterpreting parts of the Taylor Law. "Things had been occurring with the board within the last dozen years or less," he remarked. "I felt that decisions issued by the board were problematic and I felt that something was broken and I felt that I could fix it." According to Mr. Lefkowitz, the board overstepped its authority in several recent cases by issuing new rulings on matters that had already been decided by Administrative Law Judges. "I think they were making a process mistake," he said, referring to a specific case involving Nassau County Sheriffs and their use of department vehicles. "What the board has done in two or three decisions is come up with a new theory that nobody thought about or believed was particularly relevant." He added, "When I was with the board, what we would have done in those circumstances is, if we thought that the parties and the ALJ had missed the issue, we would have instructed them to submit new briefs." 'Apple of My Eye' That belief helped persuade him to apply to head PERB again, he said. "That is a significant part of my motivation," he added. "But no less a part of it is the fact that the chairmanship of PERB has long been the apple of my eye." Mr. Lefkowitz's new colleagues, who he said were chosen by the Spitzer administration without his input, will not receive a salary. Mr. Lefkowitz will be paid $120,800 a year. Mr. Hite currently works as the managing principal of Hite, O'Donnell and Beaumont. From 1995 to 2000, he was the general counsel to Council 82 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Mr. Schmertz was a controversial selection for one of the PERB board seats. His 2005 PBA decision granted incumbent officers 10.25 percent in raises over 24 months, but those hikes were financed in part by drastically reducing the starting salary of new cops to $25,100 for their first six months in training. A Bad Aftertaste The award has created major problems for the NYPD, which has struggled to attract new cops under the lower pay scale. The department is currently 1,000 officers short of its hiring goals. As for the current PBA arbitration, Governor Spitzer's delay in naming a PERB Chairman slowed the process. PERB's former Chairman, Michael R. Cuevas, left in December after heading the agency for eight years. The board's two other per-diem members, John T. Mitchell and Marc A. Abbott, departed earlier. Mr. Lynch has also rejected a list of nine arbitrators that PERB Director of Conciliation Richard A. Curreri submitted to both sides. The union objected to two mediators who a decade ago froze cops' pay for two years. That deal conformed to the pattern set by the city's other uniformed unions during that round of bargaining. Mr. Lynch has claimed that PERB officials promised the union that the list would not include any mediators who were involved in prior PBA decisions. But Mr. Curreri, who's in charge of compiling the list, asserted that he made no such promise. "There was no automatic rejection of panel members' names," he said. "There was nothing like that."
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