FOR THE RECORD

In May 1999, this newspaper reported that a candidate to head a uniformed union had told a group of his colleagues, "Let's be the first to negotiate, and we'll set the pattern."

The "parameters" of the pattern for the most-recent two rounds of bargaining have been set by the Uniformed Firefighters Association in March and the Sergeants Benevolent Association earlier this month, city negotiators have said.

Following step, the Bloomberg administration last week negotiated tentative agreements with the unions representing Sanitation Workers and fire officers.

But the usual good feelings from the three new deals announced over the past two weeks have been tempered by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association's reluctance to accept a similar wage pattern.

The PBA's contract dispute, which will once again be handled by a state arbitrator, has created major headaches for the NYPD. The department continues to struggle to recruit new cops at the reduced starting salary, which was created under the last arbitration award in 2005.

It is the proposed SBA deal that has city officials cheering. That tentative agreement would further cement a uniformed pattern for the 2005 to 2006 period expected to be covered in the PBA's upcoming arbitration. The contract, which still must be ratified, would also place the SBA six years ahead of the PBA, whose members are working under a pact that expired Aug. 1, 2004.

That 1999 quote we alluded to at the top illustrates how times have changed. It was Pat Lynch - a PBA delegate at the time - who told fellow officers during a campaign speech that he wanted the nation's largest police union to lead the pack in negotiating new contracts with city officials. Since getting a pattern-setting deal in arbitration two years ago, however, he has been outmaneuvered by city officials into having to buck two existing contract patterns.

Mr. Lynch's remark about setting the pattern came in response to a Transit cop's question about the other unions agreeing to what he believed were contracts that hurt the PBA.

In an ironic turn of events, as a candidate for president Mr. Lynch also stressed the need for unity among the police unions. "We have to stick together as cops; our jobs are much different," he told the officers. "We have to set a pattern that is worthy of cops, not a pattern for civilian workers."

Mr. Lynch has since been highly critical of contracts his counterparts have negotiated over the past several years, and went so far as to distribute literature attacking those deals during their ratification processes.

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Not everyone was happy with the progress made on congestion pricing, campaign finance reform and other big issues up in Albany last week.

The state's largest public-employee union blasted the "hint of legislative pay raises" while its 73,000 members continue to work under a contract that expired April 1. Danny Donohue, president of the Civil Service Employees Association, said it was "bad judgment at best" for Governor Spitzer and legislative leaders to even consider pay increases for lawmakers before negotiating a new deal with the union.

"For more than three months the CSEA team has patiently sat at the bargaining table without meaningful progress because of the administration's lack of direction and focus," Mr. Donohue said in a statement.

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The state is about to hit its own $1 billion mark - the total New York businesses will save in Fiscal Year 2007-08 due to reforms made in the Workers' Compensation Law earlier this year, supported by business groups and the State AFL-CIO. Workers' Comp insurance rates are set to drop by more than 20 percent, while the maximum weekly benefit will rise from $400 to $500 and the minimum will grow from $40 to $100.

The savings will primarily come from sharply curtailing the maximum number of years that workers collecting permanent partial disability benefits can receive the cash payments. Labor and state officials had argued that this "relatively small" number of workers would be taken care of through continued medical benefits and employment assistance.

State officials celebrated the fact that the reduction was greater than the 10-to-15 percent Governor Spitzer originally predicted. No doubt more than a few champagne bottles were also uncorked in board rooms.