Razzle Dazzle
Lieutenant Deal Shines A Light for Others

By RICHARD STEIER

The deal between the Lieutenants Benevolent Association and the Bloomberg administration that was announced June 27 essentially signals other uniformed unions that the coast is clear to maintain salary parity with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association without sacrificing your first-born - and all children to follow.

That had been the potential dilemma created six weeks ago when an arbitration panel awarded the PBA pay hikes worth 3.5 percent more than the other uniformed unions previously negotiated for a comparable period of time. For all the urgency the leaders of those other unions may have felt to use the re-opener clauses in their contracts to match those raises, they were not anxious to replicate the givebacks attached to the PBA award, even as the Mayor insisted they would have to find a way to equalize the costs to the city.

There were union leaders - most notably Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association President Harry Nespoli, Correction Officers Benevolent Association leader Norman Seabrook and Sergeants Benevolent Association head Ed Mullins - who questioned whether the concessions were worth the extra money to be had.

A PATH TO A DEAL? The agreement that Labor Relations Commissioner Jim Hanley (left) reached with the Lieutenants Benevolent Association to bring maximum salary for that rank back to its old relationship with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association should ease the way for Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy to do the same without making gut-wrenching givebacks.

Could Unions Afford Parity Loss?

Each made valid points on that subject. There was a larger issue to be considered, however, that went beyond the terms of the PBA deal and their overall desirability: whether the other unions could risk forsaking the parity relationship that has bound together uniformed workers for so long. The LBA agreement may persuade most if not all of them that this is a risk they should avoid.

Labor Relations Commissioner Jim Hanley last week emphasized that the terms available to the LBA might not be there for other unions, simply because certain aspects of a Police Lieutenant's job are not applicable to other uniformed positions.

One obvious example is found in a key area where the LBA's president, Tom Drogan, was able to supply savings that the city had demanded: the agreement to allow the NYPD to reschedule Lieutenants for up to five additional days annually without having to pay them overtime. This matched an element of the PBA arbitration award - under which Police Officers also had their rescheduling days increased from 15 to 20 per year. It cannot be replicated, however, by Firefighters because of different tour schedules - in fact, rescheduling in the FDNY is done not by the department but by individual employees through "mutuals," the swapping of shifts among firefighters to accommodate each other.

There will be other areas, however, where the Uniformed Firefighters Association and Uniformed Fire Officers Association can provide savings to the city. One obvious one, in fact, is a spin-off of the mutual system: because that makes it so easy for firefighters to get days off when they need them, their unions could conceivably give up a vacation day or two without provoking the outcry that was heard when Police Officers learned that their contract award required them to surrender a vacation day in order to qualify annually at the NYPD gun range.

The PBA award required 2.82 percent in concessions that were imposed to reduce the cost to the city of pay raises of 4.5 and 5 percent and an upgrade in the pay scale for new officers starting with a boost in the entry salary from $25,100 to $35,881. The other uniformed unions previously made adjustments in their pay scales, however, so they don't need to make the concessions to compensate for the half-point cost of the PBA pay-scale upgrade.

Confined Hike to Top Step

The key concession for the LBA to bridge the rest of the divide was its decision to apply the extra 3.5-percent boost the PBA got under the award for a similar contract period only to its maximum salary. The basic maximum has always been the benchmark used by the city and the unions in considering parity issues, and so this preserved that traditional relationship.

It meant that Lieutenants who did not yet have three years in the rank would not get the full benefit of the pay upgrade from the time it took effect, retroactive to Oct. 8, 2006. But because it is dealing with an old contract, most of the Lieutenants who were in that rank at that time now qualify for the boost, since they reach maximum salary after three years. Those who aren't yet eligible will be once they mark their third anniversary as Lieutenants.

This, and the agreement to have the 3.5-percent hike take effect toward the latter part of the LBA contract for that period - the negotiated raises of 3 and 3.15 percent had taken effect on July 31, 2005 and 2006 - generated the rest of the savings that squared the city's costs with its outlay under the PBA award. In comparison to the agita the uniformed unions endured trying to match the 2005 PBA arbitration award, from a reduced salary scale for new members to longer contracts, this was virtually painless.

It was why Mr. Drogan, a day after the June 26 approval, by a 71-1 count, of the package by his delegates, called it "a home-run," adding, "It's good for all the unions."

Wardens' Head: 'No Downside'

Among those who agreed was Sidney Schwartzbaum, who represents all those in the Warden ranks at the Department of Correction. "I think it's a good deal," he said. "I don't see a downside, and they didn't destroy the career path," as many uniformed unions were forced to do to match the raises under a 2005 PBA arbitration award.

"I'm glad that reasonable people were able to sit down at the table and come up with the maintenance of the parity relationship and the savings to get there," Mr. Hanley said.

After the unions' cool reaction to the most-recent PBA award, questions had been raised about whether many of them would sit back to wait for the Bloomberg administration to come a-courting rather than forcing them to make hard choices to match the award's pay hikes. There was some belief that the city would feel a greater urgency than union leaders - even if their members were clamoring for the additional money that Police Officers got.

The reasoning behind that was that once arbitration panel chair Susan Mackenzie gave short shrift to parity in formulating her award, it became imperative for the city to re-establish that link before the PBA came before another arbitration panel. It is widely believed that although the union recently renewed bargaining with the city, this is merely a prelude for a sixth PBA arbitration in its last seven contract negotiations. After all, if an arbitrator had been able to discount more than a century of pay parity between Police Officers and Firefighters, what was the next one likely to do if no longer confronted by that history?

'Riskier for the Unions'

But one veteran official not involved in the skirmishing said last week that confronting such a scenario was "risky for the city, but it's particularly risky for the unions."

This official, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, alluded to the fact that a major reason that the PBA has been the one uniformed union to consistently try its hand in arbitration is that it has the strongest case that its members are underpaid in comparison with other jurisdictions, whether in neighboring suburban departments or in other large cities around the nation. It is the one union for which parity is a four-letter word.

City Correction Officers and Sanitation Workers, on the other hand, are fairly well-compensated in comparison to their counterparts in other cities, and the SanWorkers, while their basic pay rate is just 90 percent of that for cops, in many cases make more money than them because of differentials they receive tied to productivity.

For much of Long Island, whose police salaries have long been the envy of city cops, when it comes to fire service, this official noted, "There's a lot of volunteers around. I don't know that [city] firefighters are underpaid compared to any other fire service."

And so if parity has served the city well by giving it a basic framework for all uniformed contracts and thwarting the PBA's grander aspirations, it has also worked to the advantage of the other uniformed unions, this official said.

'They'd Have a Problem'

"In a tight financial market, the city might choose to put its money with police, whether because of recruiting problems or comparability problems that don't exist in the Fire Department, or other reasons. For sanitation and correction, it could be even more problematic. The city wouldn't like that [bargaining] chaos, but after the free-for-all ends, I don't know where these groups fit in terms of comparability. If there is no parity, where are they gonna be?"

The LBA deal suggests that union, which has been especially resourceful in adapting to the problems posed by PBA contracts ever since a longtime president, Jim Gebhardt, found himself voted out of office because of the concessions he had to make to match the wage gains in a PBA pact reached 20 years ago, didn't want to have to answer that question.

The solution it found is likely to spur a number of other unions which had taken a wait-and-see attitude to move toward serious negotiations. The LBA deal holds the prospect that they can also find ways to match the extra PBA raises without unduly hurting present or future members.

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