MEA President Faces Challenge, With Salary Issues At Forefront

STEPHEN M. FERRER: Calls pay criticisms unfair. Managerial Employees Association President Stephen M. Ferrer is facing a challenge in upcoming October elections from a dissident slate that says more action should be taken on the disparity between managers and unionized workers, protesting the long waits for raises MEA members have faced.

Mr. Ferrer defended his record as president, saying that managerial raises had taken longer to be implemented because of tough financial times but that he had opened important channels with Mayor Bloomberg’s office when advocating on behalf of his members.

‘Direct Line to Deputy Mayor’

“We’ve worked very hard over the past year. . . with Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler,” Mr. Ferrer said in a phone interview.“ We now have a direct contact with the Deputy Mayor for the first time in years.”

STU EBER: Managers not respected economically. “Our raises came seven months after the unions received theirs,” countered Stu Eber, the candidate for president on the Independence in Action Team slate. “Almost 3,000 managers have not received their [increases]. Managers in the Health and Hospitals Corporation and the Department of Education have not yet received anything.”

The MEA is an association that can advocate but lacks bargaining rights for its members, and thus relied on persuading Mayor Bloomberg in the name of equity to approve raises for managers and non-union employees at the same time that their unionized subordinates got hikes. Some veteran union members were making more than their bosses, and unlike managers are eligible for overtime pay.

Managers eventually received two 4-percent raises in July, in line with District Council 37’s most-recent collective bargaining agreement. But three non-mayoral agencies, HHC, the DOE and the Housing Authority, were not subject to the Mayor’s decree and have not doled out increases.

Hopeful on DOE, HHC Hikes

Mr. Ferrer predicted in a phone interview that HHC raises would eventually be approved. “They move slowly. . . but we have heard that the raises are going to happen,” he said. The MEA is also asking the Mayor’s office to approve raises at the DOE now that the question of mayoral control has been solved. “The DOE is a mayoral agency, and I pointed that out to Deputy Mayor Skyler,” he said.

HA Commissioner John B. Rhea has been more forceful on the subject. “HA’s Chairman told his managers to eat cake and send their children to work instead of to college: no raises for them,” alleged Mr. Eber, a retired Deputy Commissioner from the Human Resources Administration who serves as the union’s retirees chair and previously was a close advisor to Mr. Ferrer.

Mr. Ferrer admitted that Mr. Rhea had decided not to issue raises to managers, but said he was working on changing his mind. “[Mr. Skyler] immediately told his assistant to call the HA and set up a meeting. So we will be meeting with John Rhea to discuss it, and we’ll ask him to change his decision,” he said.

The Pay’s the Thing

Shelly Shulman, who is running for executive vice president on the IAT slate, said that managers “must earn more than their unionized subordinates” and “must be guaranteed a meaningful salary increase upon promotion— enough to make up for the loss of paid overtime and longevity differentials.”

Ms. Shulman charged that “although Mr. Ferrer promised to press for increased managerial minimums when he ran for office, he has dropped this from his agenda.”

Mr. Ferrer said that his record at the MEA, where membership in the opt-in organization has risen 25 percent since he took office, spoke for itself. “Before I became president. . . the agencies had [individual] discretion on the raises,” he said. “I thought that was terrible. I talked to the Bloomberg administration about it, and they immediately changed it; now it’s across the board.”

Affiliation Controversy

The IAT slate, which is being managed by Mr. Ferrer’s predecessor, Bill Dworkin, also charged that Mr. Ferrer has distracted the MEA by raising the possibility of forming a union, a contentious proposal among the executive board members. “The members’ business was no longer the primary focus of our monthly meetings. . . we can’t stand it anymore,” Mr. Eber said.

Mr. Ferrer said that while there had been no discussion of the MEA forming a union, which it is legally barred from doing, he had considered affiliating with a private-sector union to increase his members’ benefits, looking closely at Local 150 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union.

“I think we need to vigorously look at all possibilities,” he said. If the MEA joined, its members would “still have their autonomy, still run the organization by themselves, they’re still managers. But they get increased benefits from being part of a larger organization,” he argued. “It’s been exploratory, no agreements have been made, and right now we’re not close, and it’s still an idea I’d like to look at in the future.”