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Razzle Dazzle
Sitting in the UFA offices March 7, the day before a membership meeting at which he was to lay out the terms of the March 2 settlement to his rank and file, Mr. Cassidy said that while he had sought the differential for a larger group, in the end he moved Mr. Hanley upward considerably from his initial position that only the 35 Firefighters in the Haz-Mat Unit should receive it. Didn't Cut Into Pie Most importantly, he added, the differential had not been carved out of a pie that otherwise might have given his entire membership raises exceeding the two 4-percent hikes it provides, or other benefit improvements. The driving force behind the "specialty pay" was actually Fire Department management, according to both union and FDNY officials, with Mr. Cassidy saying retired Chief of Department Pete Hayden had been a particularly strong advocate. Haz-Mat, because of the nature of its duties, is one of the rare units for which the FDNY has trouble recruiting. Firefighters assigned there, and those performing rescue and related duties in the Special Ops Command, under the deal would finally be getting the same bump in pay as cops assigned to equivalent work in the NYPD Emergency Services Unit.
And so at about 7 p.m. on the night of the settlement, he told Mr. Hanley he wouldn't make the deal unless he could use a piece of the money intended for specialty pay to boost the differential given to chauffeurs and tillermen (who operate the back end of the rigs on the diminishing number of hook-and-ladder trucks) from 2.05 percent of base salary to 3 percent. The UFA leader said Mr. Hanley told him he needed to make a phone call on the matter, and when he was finished, the Labor Commissioner returned to the table and said he could increase chauffeur pay without reducing the specialty differential. Mr. Cassidy said that even before his old contract expired last August, he had raised the concept of specialty pay for his entire membership. He wished he had been able to secure the new differential for more of his members, but he added, "You can't get it for a de-con [de-contamination engine company] until you get it for Rescue. We'll never walk away from free money as long as I'm president of the union." 'Shocked' by Key Gains And that issue, he said, was the only one on which he expected any static from his members as they prepared for a ratification vote on the terms. In other respects, he contended, his rank and file was "still relatively in shock" at some of the gains they were able to make. The two 4-percent increases would boost starting pay from the current $63,309 to $68,475 by Aug. 1. A month later, longevity differentials would be increased by $1,000 for those with at least five years on the job. For those on the first of the four longevity steps - about 1,800 of whom would first become eligible during the two-year duration of the pact - this would amount to a 50-percent increase over the current differential of $2,000. Fire Marshals, whose salary rate would now be equaled by those qualifying for specialty pay, would get an $1,100 uniform allowance effective July 31, 2008, the final day of the contract. Mayor Bloomberg, not surprisingly, emphasized the jump in starting salary under the deal from $25,100 to $35,000. The gain isn't nearly that great once you consider that under the current contract new Firefighters were being paid at an annual rate of $32,700 once they completed 13 weeks of training, meaning their actual salary for their first full year on the job was $30,800. Editorials castigating the Mayor for the low wages for rookie cops and Firefighters don't bother with such nuances, however. And so the boost in salary was really about minimizing a public-relations problem rather than a true reversal of the jolt to the salary scale that was triggered by a June 2005 arbitration award for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. Just Moving Money This was fine with Mr. Cassidy, who readily acknowledged that the bump in the starting salary was financed by taking away other benefits - in areas like paid holidays, night differential and annuity payments - from future Firefighters during their first five years on the job. "My position on that is, Pat Lynch is right," he said, referring to the PBA president's past contention that his responsibility is to negotiate for those he already represents; the city's is to make starting pay reasonable enough to allow the NYPD to meet its recruitment needs. "I did not go to 25-1 of my own volition - that was a mandate from the City of New York," Mr. Cassidy. "I view my responsibility as to those guys who were on the job the last 14 months [and therefore subject to the reduced pay scale], and they get the benefits of this contract." All Firefighters hired between the beginning of 2006 and the end of this month would fall under the upgraded pay scale without having to suffer concessions in other areas. (Those with at least a year on the job as of April 1 would advance to the second step on the new pay scale, making their salaries $36,725.) Specialty pay is not the only area where the contract would provide a gain for his members that is not reflected in how the city is valuing the settlement, Mr. Cassidy said. No Moonlighting Worries One item under the deal that has psychic value to his members concerns the abolition of the Extra Department Employment rules requiring Firefighters to obtain FDNY permission before taking a second job. Mr. Cassidy said his own experience prior to becoming UFA president was not uncommon among the rank and file: "I never asked [the department] for permission to work on the side, but every Firefighter was always worried that somebody would rat them out, and if the department didn't like them, it would crush them." With those rules gone - assuming the deal is ratified - he continued, "They can now put this in their back pocket: they don't have to ask for permission to feed their family."He also got a re-opener clause that permits the UFA to return to bargaining in the event that the PBA in an upcoming arbitration gets an award that exceeds the value of either the final two years of his old contract or this one. "And Hanley had said," Mr. Cassidy contended, '''I'll never give you language covering an old contract.''' Mr. Hanley declined comment on all the negotiating byplay described by Mr. Cassidy, saying only, "We reached a settlement that made sense, and it's good for everybody." PBA on Mayor's Mind It's clear, however, that it was something other than generosity of spirit on his part or Mayor Bloomberg's that led them to provide the re-opener guarantee. That something is the ongoing battle with the PBA. The re-opener, while it leaves the city liable for potentially tens of millions of dollars in additional payments to Firefighters if the PBA wins better terms in arbitration, also gives it extra ammunition to convince the arbitration panel that there would be major consequences to breaking parity between the two forces. More immediately, however, the re-opener guarantee fortifies Mr. Cassidy against skeptics among his members who might assert that they shouldn't settle for these terms before seeing how the PBA does in its arbitration, even though that might not be decided for another year. Talks Fizzled, Revived The negotiating process as Mr. Cassidy described it produced an initial stalemate because he insisted that the specialty pay be granted to a far larger contingent than the Haz-Mat Unit. "All along I heard the Mayor cannot go for this number," he said, referring to the combination of Haz-Mat and SOC Firefighters. When the UFA talks sputtered, Mr. Hanley turned his attention to the uniformed coalition, eventually prompting Mr. Cassidy to join the group. By late January, however, those talks had bogged down; as Mr. Hanley noted, no future negotiating sessions had been scheduled with the coalition at the time the UFA deal was reached. Trying to Speed a Deal The Bloomberg administration, facing a police recruiting problem that Commissioner Ray Kelly has repeatedly attributed to the low starting salary, does not want to resolve the PBA contract on Mr. Lynch's timetable, which assuming it's handled by an arbitration panel, would produce an award at the end of the year, if things go right. If they don't, it would affect not only this July's police class but the one scheduled for next January, with at least 3,000 new cops due to be hired. The one possible way the administration could force Mr. Lynch to the table would be if there was enough of an outcry from his members upset that they've been working more than 2-1/2 years under an expired contract that an opponent to Mr. Lynch's re-election this spring might emerge. A UFA deal that, at least temporarily, puts the salary for veteran Firefighters nearly $9,000 above what cops with the same experience are receiving, and brings starting salary somewhere between $2,300 and $9,900 above what rookie cops are currently making, offers the most likely way to generate that pressure. Mr. Cassidy is aware of all that. He said he called Mr. Lynch shortly before the deal was announced to apprise him of its details and see whether he strenuously objected. Defuses OMB Claim Regardless of whether he had, though, the UFA leader was convinced that the city had made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Even the maneuvering to raise the starting salary, which Mr. Cassidy described as "a wash" because of the corresponding reduction in benefits for future Firefighters, he saw as a plus because it would make clear to what he calls "the numbers people" at the Office of Management and Budget that the city wasn't saving money by having the Fire Department hire more of the newer, cheaper Firefighters than it was authorized to do. In recent months, he said, the FDNY has frequently had more than 100 Firefighters more than it was budgeted for, and on one day in February wound up with 160 above the authorized headcount. The excess in personnel leads to the department placing a fifth Firefighter on engine companies that normally only use four, but it also takes away overtime from Firefighters who would have to be deployed any time that a company came up shorthanded because one of its members called in sick or was injured while on duty. Mr. Cassidy contended that the additional benefit costs incurred when the department hires above its mandate rather than granting more overtime wipe out the savings from using the lower-salaried Firefighters, and said the higher rate for rookies may curb the impulse to just keep hiring. He said FDNY officials had offered to reduce the class planned this month from 300 to 125, but he demurred, since the Firefighters who are hired before April 1 won't suffer the benefit losses that balanced the scales on the upgraded starting pay. He said the UFA will push the department to take advantage of the extra Firefighters now available to permanently increase the number of engine companies staffed by five-person crews from 64 to 84. Passage No Certainty There's enough of a history of Firefighters voting down contracts that offered the best terms they could have expected to keep Mr. Cassidy from feeling overconfident about his new deal's chances when it is voted on over the next month. He said so much of his membership consisted of younger Firefighters that he wasn't sure they were aware of the disastrous consequences of voting down two consecutive contract deals between 1989 and 1992 when those pacts wound up being decided by arbitrators. Their nearest frame of reference is likely to be the transit worker contract that was narrowly rejected 14 months ago, forcing an arbitration that produced virtually identical terms, but with a 10-month delay in when they were actually paid.
"I don't think they're gonna vote it down," Mr. Cassidy
said of his deal, "but I also don't think our members realize what happens when
you vote a contract down." | ||||||
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