Pursue Lag Payroll Suit
Nassau COs Refuse Contract Arbitration

By REUVEN BLAU

The union representing Nassau County Correction Officers Aug. 23 rejected the county negotiator's offer of a one-time conditional binding arbitration to resolve the contract impasse that has dragged on for more than two years.

BRIAN SULLIVAN: Arbitration without strings.

Members of the Sheriff Officers' Association (ShOA), which represents approximately 1,100 Correction Officers, have been working under an expired contract since January 2005.

Wouldn't Drop Suit

The union had been seeking to gain the right to binding arbitration via legislation, to no avail. But the county's offer would have been contingent upon the ShOA withdrawing its Federal lawsuit concerning a lag payroll and submitting that dispute to an arbitration panel.

Nassau Labor Director Dan McCray ripped the union's decision, arguing that ShOA never said that stipulation would void the arbitration proposal. "It's perplexing and disappointing," he said during an Aug. 23 phone interview. "And nothing that they did today gets them any closer to a contract. But they decided that fighting lawsuits of dubious value was more important than trying to come to an agreement."

By all accounts, the country agreed to the union's request to extend a potential contract to eight years, leaving its expiration at the same time as for the Nassau Police Officers' pact. "I don't know what their end-game is," Mr. McCray said. "We thought this is the good way to break the impasse; it's what they wanted."

In September 2006, a Federal judge ordered the county to pay its Correction Officers the money it withheld as part of a lag payroll plan to help reduce expenditures and avert layoffs during the district's 1999 fiscal crisis.

The decision, which is being appealed by the county, is expected to cost the district $2.6 million to repay the officers, but the ruling could have far greater ramifications, insiders have said.

The other Long Island-based unions are expected to argue that their members should also be paid, because their Lag Payroll Agreement (LPA) included a provision that specified the deal was only valid if all the county's main labor organizations were included.

Tab Could Be $20M

Compensating those workers may cost the county as much as $20 million next year, sources said. Shortly after the court ruling, Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman said that the district has set aside and reserved funds to cover that expense.

In December 1999, then-Nassau County Executive Tom Gulotta met with all the county's unions and advised them that employees would be laid off unless they agreed to certain cost-saving measures.

At the time of that discussion and subsequent agreement, ShOA was in the midst of negotiating a new contract. The LPA for ShOA stipulated that it would only be valid after a new accord was ratified. But the union's deal was never finalized, and ShOA's renegotiated contract did not include any mention of the LPA.

Nonetheless, in September 2003, the county moved to lag the pay of ShOA members, contending that the union had been given proper notice. The union objected and sued, charging that withholding pay from its members violated the contract. "Our argument was that lag was only tied to our first contract, and that was turned down," said Brian Sullivan, the union's first vice president.

'County Went Too Far'

Last September, U.S. District Judge Arthur D. Spatt of the Eastern District of New York ruled in favor of the union. "The actions taken by the county were clearly unauthorized," he concluded. The decision noted that the county acknowledged that its authorization was based solely on the LPA, which lower courts ruled was not part of the ShOA deal.

The unions agreed to a lag payroll, which allowed the county to defer 10 days of pay for each union member over the course of 10 bi-weekly pay periods. The deferred money would be returned only after employees left their jobs.

The ShOA wage dispute seemed to be resolved in 2005, when both sides announced a tentative six-year agreement that included a provision to curb excessive overtime.

A week before the proposed deal was announced, however, it was revealed that one Correction Officer earned $224,903 during the previous year with the help of 1,040 hours of overtime. The county also claimed that the average officer earned $100,000 annually by supplementing his or her salary working overtime, an assertion the union vehemently denied.

The tentative deal provided a 20-percent raise over six years, starting with a 2.5-percent hike in 2005 and a 3.5-percent boost for each of the next five years.

Legislature Balked

But the accord was rejected by the Nassau County Legislature after it was revealed that Nassau's other unions had the ability to demand similar benefits under their "me-too" clauses. Changing all those deals could have cost the state an additional $140 million.

ShOA has since filed an improper labor practice complaint, arguing that clause violates the state's Taylor Law. According to the union, Mr. McCray also recently sought to have the labor organization withdraw that complaint as a condition to allowing the binding arbitration proposal to move forward.

A fact-finding panel appointed by the state Public Employment Relations Board has begun reviewing the ShOA contract situation. The panel's recommendations will not be binding, but are likely to offer a framework for an eventual deal.

ShOA President John Duer has contended that his union is the only law-enforcement labor organization in the area that does not have the right to binding arbitration. "We want regular arbitration," Mr. Sullivan said during an Aug. 23 phone interview. "There are too many conditions involved. It just didn't fly with our board of governors."