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Razzle Dazzle
Ten years ago next week, Mr. Garvey bowed to what he viewed as reality and agreed to a contract that contained a two-year wage freeze rather than wait to see whether the PBA, then led by Lou Matarazzo, could do better. Other Cop Unions Torpedoed Deal In July 1997, egged on by officials from other police unions, Mr. Garvey's members voted down the tentative deal by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. The then-head of the Sergeants' Benevolent Association, Joe Toal, with unusual candor acknowledged the organized campaign against the pact, saying, "The word was out from the other unions: 'kill it.'''
Three years ago, Mr. Garvey was among the uniformed union leaders to defer their contract talks to allow the PBA to try to set a pattern. Things were going to be different from 1997, he was assured, since the PBA had gotten out from under the thumb of the city Board of Collective Bargaining and was now making its case under the rules of the state Public Employment Relations Board. This was supposed to mean that the arbitrators would pay more attention to the salaries of cops in other state jurisdictions than they would to compensation for other city employees. Furthermore, Mr. Lynch had promised not to make the kind of attrition-based deal that screwed all the other police and fire unions 19 years ago and eventually got Mr. Garvey his job. Then-PBA President Phil Caruso helped fund three 6-percent raises and a major increase in longevity benefits by freezing starting salaries and making new cops wait until they had worked five years rather than three before getting maximum salary. His LBA counterpart, Jim Gebhardt, said if he did the same thing to future promotees to his rank, eventually "the unborn will grow big enough to eat me." In the end, he was forced to stretch his pay scale to get the same wage and longevity improvements as the PBA, and Mr. Gebhardt's words proved prophetic: the new Lieutenants who got screwed in the process voted him out of office in favor of Mr. Garvey in 1991. Didn't Buy Lynch's Explanation So imagine Mr. Garvey's chagrin when the PBA arbitration award was issued 23 months ago and it featured another screwing of the unborn to limit the cost of two 5-percent raises. Mr. Lynch insisted his promise applied only to what happened at the bargaining table, not to arbitration, but few of his uniformed colleagues were buying it. Mr. Garvey, who because he faces mandatory retirement during his current term as LBA president was thinking more about his legacy than internal politics, tried something different to avoid cutting the pay scale for future Lieutenants. He kept his pay plan intact by agreeing last July to have future promotees work an additional 13 tours in each of their first seven years in the rank. At the same time, however, he persuaded the Bloomberg administration to agree to allow his members in eight specified precincts to work 12-hour tours, which meant a sharp reduction in the number of shifts they had to be scheduled for in order to comply with the minimum annual hourly requirements under the Public Officers' Law. Longer tours have long been popular among Mr. Garvey's members, and so getting it, even on a limited basis, made those who would stay on the existing duty chart willing to work 10 minutes longer each shift for the chance to eventually be covered if the program was expanded. And the cut in tours to be worked, from 216 to 155 for incumbents, was so big for those who got the 12-hour tours that even new promotees could understand the overall deal was worth it if some of them might also benefit eventually. This nice thought abruptly got shoved to the side, however, when the current PBA arbitration included a union demand that longer tours be considered as part of the package, and PERB's chief city mediator categorically ruled it out, deeming the issue a prohibited subject for purposes of arbitration. The BCB Staw Man There was a distinct irony to this ruling. Mr. Lynch and his bargaining counsel, Mike Murray, for years have railed at the Board of Collective Bargaining as a mayoral tool that will always act against the best interests of cops. They have continued to do this despite several recent BCB rulings that went in the PBA's favor. Yet it was the BCB, back in 1975, that ruled that the length of a Police Officer's tour was a mandatory subject of bargaining and therefore could be considered in arbitration. It took an officer of PERB, the body that Mr. Lynch and Mr. Murray have been promising for years would deliver cops to the promised land, to directly contradict that ruling. He thwarted the PBA's hopes to reduce the number of appearances made by its members, put the fate of the extended-tour program for Lieutenants in limbo, and delayed all police union bargaining while the PBA appeals the decision to PERB's three principal members. Mr. Garvey wasn't amused by this turn of the bargaining screw. "Any time you go to arbitration, you pick up the dice and there's a risk," he said. "And guess who lost?" Sees False Panacea He said of the PBA's leaders, "They've been selling this bill of goods to their members that PERB is the panacea for all their problems. My feeling is the panacea for all their problems is to negotiate in good faith." A PBA spokesman declined comment on Mr. Garvey's remarks. The PBA's mistrust of the Bloomberg administration in bargaining, and some of the acrimony, has spread to the Captains' Endowment Association. This is significant because CEA President John Driscoll in the past had a relatively good relationship with City Hall and on more than one occasion has criticized Mr. Lynch. Mr. Driscoll is now bound for arbitration because, he claims, the city has failed to give him the appropriate credit for savings he has offered for a contract that would date back to the fall of 2003 - a charge Labor Commissioner Jim Hanley has denied. Not Mollified by Mayor "They're treating my members disgracefully," Captain Driscoll said in a May 16 phone interview. "I've been a good soldier the whole time that Bloomberg's been in office. My union is the one that makes the department work, and I'm 42 months without a contract. I could do a six-year contract tomorrow if they would give me fair value." He said that during a brief one-on-one meeting with the Mayor about the contract impasse, Mr. Bloomberg had told him, '''Well, you know, the pattern is the pattern.' I said, 'The only pattern here is I'm getting screwed.' They say, 'Your members work extra hours anyway, so why should we pay you for [extended tours]? You're good employees, so we're gonna punish you for it.''' Mr. Driscoll continued, "This is a Mayor who built a multi-billion-dollar business. He's got better business sense than this." Asked if he felt like a prisoner of the hostile bargaining climate that exists between City Hall and the PBA, the CEA leader replied, "It's obviously a big war and there's a lot of vitriol on both sides, and it's not doing anyone any good." One of the most-contentious issues in the PBA arbitration actually raises questions about the union's belief that PERB will be fairer than the BCB was. The union balked at considering a list of arbitrators submitted by PERB's Director of Conciliation because it contained two arbiters who were involved in the 1997 contract award that forced cops to endure a two-year wage freeze at its outset. Panels Not So Different That award came from a BCB panel; the arbitrators at issue, Arnold Zack and Stanley Aiges, are used by both bodies, and are hardly the only ones. There has been no arbitration decision in memory that has cited a difference between the rules of the two agencies in explaining why a benefit was denied or granted. The United Federation of Teachers, which has been under PERB's jurisdiction far longer than the PBA, has used its binding arbitration process only once in the past three decades, and was sufficiently dissatisfied with the outcome for its 1985 contract that it has shunned the process since, opting instead for nonbinding arbitration to resolve disputes with the city. Transport Workers' Union Local 100 has also been reluctant to use the PERB arbitration mechanism. The PBA and its members, however, have pegged their hopes on PERB based on suburban legend: the generous wage deals cops in Nassau and Suffolk counties have gotten in arbitration during the last 30 years. Those who truly believe those awards resulted from PERB's rules being more cop-friendly than the BCB's probably also wonder why Las Vegas doesn't use betting lines on professional wrestling. Cozy Setup on Island Arbitration on the Island was long the way that the Republicans in the County Executive seats and the legislative majority rewarded the police unions for their political support. Office-holders immunized themselves against criticism that they were being too generous by having third parties do it for them. It also didn't hurt that, in contrast to the ultra-competitive newspaper environment in the city, Long Island has been a place where Newsday had a virtual monopoly and was not inclined to rail against potentially unaffordable pay raises for cops. Eventually, however, escalating police costs became a major factor in Nassau County's financial woes early this decade, which led to Democrats gaining control of both the executive and legislative branches there and the creation of an outside authority to monitor the county's spending. There was no truer illustration of the extent to which the fix had been in over the years than a portion of the 2003 arbitration award after County Executive Tom Suozzi took on the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association, vowing to hold the line on contract costs. The arbitrators rejected Mr. Suozzi's bid for a three-year wage freeze, instead granting 21-percent wage hikes over six years even while freezing wages during two intervals covering 18 months. But they also somewhat reduced what the county was spending on night-differential pay for cops, ruling that it should no longer be paid between 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. because "this time period does not comport with the generally accepted belief that employees who work late hours which disrupt their family lives should be compensated for this inconvenience." Scolding Himself The humor in that declaration lay in the fact that one of the arbitrators who signed off on it, Martin Scheinman, had been responsible in the previous Nassau PBA contract for granting the 10-percent night differential between 11 a.m. and noon. This was not a case of Mr. Scheinman seeing the error of his profligate ways; he was no longer under orders from management to give away the store. The raises in Nassau and Suffolk also drove up compensation in many neighboring police departments, but the city remained largely immune. Several factors propelled the last three Mayors to hold the line, from the interlocking pay relationships with other unions, especially the Uniformed Firefighters' Association, to the reality that the Long Island forces were so much smaller than the NYPD that it limited the number of cops who could jump ship for much-improved pay and less-stressful working conditions. It is worth noting that the former PBA officials who were the driving force behind the union's bid to gain arbitration under PERB during the 1990s were the union's bargaining counsel, Richie Hartman, and its two primary lawyers, Jim Lysaght and Peter Kramer. All three men lost those positions after they were convicted in 1998 of labor-racketeering charges, the primary one being that they had made payoffs to the leaders of the now-defunct Transit Police Benevolent Association for creating a civil representation fund that was of no use to its members but paid the three officials $750,000 a year. Three men looking to generate cash from enterprises of dubious value could do worse than using a PERB bill to generate lobbying fees and then, if it became law, to reap hefty arbitration fees above their basic retainers. Mixed History At PERB It was not until after Mr. Lynch took office in 1999 that the PBA was able to use the PERB bill in a contract arbitration. At first it appeared the union would have no more success under PERB than it had in two tries before the BCB in the 1990s: in August of 2002, the Daily News reported that the arbitration panel was poised to give PBA members a choice between a 10-percent raise and 1.5 percent in additional payments that matched the terms negotiated by a uniformed coalition under a 30-month contract with the Bloomberg administration a year earlier, or better wage hikes over 24 months contingent on cops working an additional 10 tours a year. The final award, however, announced later that summer, was somewhat better: the union got the same raises as the uniformed coalition but over just 24 months. It was noted that the chairman of the arbitration panel, Dana Eischen, did most of his work upstate and therefore did not have to worry about the Bloomberg administration excluding him from consideration for other panels in retaliation for allowing the PBA to be able to translate the six-month difference in contract length into an extra raise in the future. The last PBA arbitration, in 2005, resulted in the union getting two 5-percent raises, significantly exceeding the 3-percent total hike over the same period under a stinker of a contract agreed to a year earlier by District Council 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. But it also came with a price - a reduction in the pay scale for future cops that far exceeded the giveback Ms. Roberts agreed to for her "unborn" members, reducing the real cost to the city to just 6 percent. Didn't Anticipate Fallout The arbitration panel chairman, Eric Schmertz, stated that he began with the conviction that Police Officers deserved raises of 5 percent a year. He didn't give much thought, however, to the impact that the reduced pay scale would have either on the recruitment of new cops or on other uniformed unions that would feel compelled to match the PBA raises and so would have to slash pay or benefits for their future members. In signing off on the award, Mr. Lynch was devaluing the career path for his members who had hopes of advancing in the NYPD, since the unions representing the two direct promotional lines, Sergeant and Detective, had to reduce the pay scales for their future members. Money was also left on the table when Mr. Schmertz opted not to reopen the arbitration hearings to consider the impact of an award for State Troopers that granted them more than $2,500 a year for anti-terrorism work. And so the award basically punched a hole in the city's contention that the DC 37 settlement constituted a pattern that should be relevant in deciding the PBA contract, but it also, for the second consecutive arbitration under PERB, fell well short of Mr. Lynch's call for a "market adjustment" that would significantly narrow the gap between his members' pay and that for neighboring jurisdictions. The raises were more than a point higher annually than those granted to Nassau cops over the same period, but the Nassau PBA contract by the end of last year raised starting salary to $34,000, about $9,000 more than the beginning pay resulting from the 2005 arbitration. And maximum pay, which is somewhat skewed by the fact that city cops are working under a deal that expired 34 months ago, is nearly $33,000 below what Nassau officers have received since last July. City Just Juggling The city, of course, is confronting serious recruitment problems, starting with its ability to attract new cops and continuing up the ranks as fewer veteran officers take and pass promotion exams because of a lack of enthusiasm for reduced pay scales in the higher ranks. Its attempt to make the entry-level job more palatable, however, has consisted of moving money around: bringing starting pay up sharply but offsetting the gain by reducing key benefits in areas like night-differential and vacation time. Mr. Bloomberg has not been totally dogmatic in bargaining. While he has insisted that negotiated settlements conform to the bargaining patterns already in place, there have been innovations besides Mr. Garvey's extended-tour arrangement in deals ranging from bigger raises tied to longer schedules for Teachers to an extra differential for Firefighters assigned to Rescue and Hazardous-Materials units. Static Turned to Stability One irony of the latter deal was what it said about the continued evolution of Uniformed Firefighters' Association President Steve Cassidy. He won office five years ago by tapping into rank-and-file anger, and there seemed a clear danger that he might govern in the same manner that he had campaigned. That anger had proved disastrous for Firefighters two decades ago when they rejected contracts negotiated by two different union leaders, only to get clobbered both times in arbitration when the city used the same scope-of-bargaining process that led to the PBA losing its bid for extended tours. Mr. Cassidy has had several angry confrontations with City Hall and Fire Commissioner Nick Scoppetta, but he has succeeded in winning two decent contracts that leave his members four years ahead of the PBA at the moment, and better than $8,700 ahead on maximum salary. Which is not to say that the four-year gap is a terrible thing for those making the decisions at the PBA. It could mean two more lucrative arbitrations for Mr. Murray, since Mr. Lynch is now the one using membership anger for political advantage and just gained another four-year term without opposition. It remains to be seen, however, whether members will believe it was worth it if they have to wait another year for an arbitration award and it doesn't exceed the pattern set by the UFA under its 2005 contract. That is also, it should be noted, another year in which the city will try to get an adequate number of new recruits while paying a substandard starting wage, with attrition among those now on the job likely to be high as well because of dissatisfaction with top pay. In one respect, Mr. Garvey and Mr. Driscoll aren't alone. Neither the city nor the PBA is happy about the current state of things, but their anger toward each other sometimes makes it feel as if each side is so intent on vanquishing the other that they have lost sight of the problems that have to be solved.
Almost everyone in this labor-management battle feels
screwed; they just part company on where the blame lies. | ||||||
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