Finding Balance on Parity
Over the past two weeks, three uniformed unions representing superior officers in the Police and Fire departments have reached deals with the Bloomberg administration that allowed them to maintain salary parity with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

Although details of two of them haven't been disclosed, it appears they all have one thing in common: the agreements do not seek to pay for the wage gains at the expense of future promotees to the ranks of Sergeant and Lieutenant in the NYPD and all officer ranks in the FDNY.

That stands in contrast to the previous round of bargaining, when a 2005 PBA arbitration award that gutted starting pay and the salary scale for new cops prompted virtually all the uniformed unions to make similar concessions on the backs of the "unborn" to match the wage hikes in that accord.

The one exception during that round was the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, which rather than cut its pay scale agreed to have new members work an additional 13 tours during the first seven years on the job and have all members extend their daily tours by 10 minutes to provide sufficient savings to the city. Then-LBA President Tony Garvey argued that this was the least-painful form of giveback, and that it was important to keep salaries in line rather than setting up a two-tier system.

His successor in the job, Tom Drogan, clearly concurred. Rather than make extensive concessions - most of them falling on future members' backs - as the PBA had to under its most-recent arbitration award two months ago, he kept the givebacks to a minimal level under his recent re-opener deal to capture an extra 3.5 percent in raises that were granted to Police Officers in that arbitration.

He did so by confining the increase to the top step on the pay scale, and delaying its implementation somewhat in comparison with the PBA. All Lieutenants will receive that raise once they have the three years in the rank that qualifies them for maximum salary, and other than the delay, the only thing they and future promotees will lose involves the NYPD being able to reschedule their tours for an additional five days a year without paying overtime.

The speed with which the Sergeants Benevolent Association and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association followed the LBA in making deals suggests they have found a balance between maintaining parity and not damaging the career paths for their agencies.