The de Blasio administration has settled its first labor contract, a quick deal with 200 environmental officers that could signal a smoother period of labor relations after the cold war between the unions and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The officers, whose duties include patrolling the city’s watershed upstate, had been working without a contract for an astounding nine years. Under the new agreement, they will receive an average of more than $50,000 each in back pay.
Kenneth Wynder, who represents the officers as head of the Law Enforcement Employees Benevolent Association, praised the de Blasio administration for its “fairness.”
“We got treated with respect,” he said. “We felt much better compared to the nine-year battle we had with the old administration,” he told the Daily News.
Bloomberg left office on Dec. 31 without any of the city’s 300,000 unionized workers under contract, creating a major challenge for Mayor de Blasio. The city’s unions are demanding more than $7 billion in back pay, a sum that could break the city’s budget.
The situation of the environmental officers, however, represented a special circumstance. Theirs was the only union that had not reached a contract with the city for the years 2005 to 2007. As a result, the terms of their settlement are not expected to set a pattern for the city’s other unionized workers, whose contracts expired beginning in 2008.
The DEP officers are armed, and their ranks have doubled since the 9/11 attacks, when city officials took more seriously the idea that the reservoirs could be targeted by terrorists.
The officers had been locked in a protracted dispute with the Bloomberg administration over whether they should be treated on a par with other uniformed service workers — entitled, for example, to many of the same benefits as NYPD cops.
Last year, arbitration and a court ruling went the union’s way, but the officers still could not strike a deal with the city.
“It took several negotiations sessions with the old administration, 11 arbitration dates, a Supreme Court hearing and one final meeting in December to get nothing done,” Wynder said.
Union negotiators sat down with city reps, including de Blasio’s new Labor Relations commissioner, Robert Linn, last Thursday. In a single session, they hammered out the agreement.
It calls for raises of 5% for 2005 and 4% in both 2006 and 2007 — on par with increases given to city police in those years.
The agreement also will double their differential pay for working nights to 10% from 5%, increase their annual uniform allowance to $1,000 from $250, and make them eligible for line-of-duty injury pay.
The de Blasio administration failed to respond to repeated requests for comment.
