UFT Contract Agreement Has Hitches

Juan Gonzalez details the fissures between the "uniformed" unions and the "civilian" unions over the tentative UFT contract deal:

The tentative UFT deal includes two years of 4% retroactive pay increases for teachers, who have been without a contract since November 2009 — longer than nearly all other city unions. Increases in subsequent years would be far smaller — about 1% per year, and would then grow in the final years, sources said.

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Pay increases during the later years of the tentative contract are contingent on the city reaching agreement with the Municipal Labor Committee, which represents all city unions, to redirect a proposed $2 billion in savings in employee health care costs into wage hikes for all city workers, the sources said.

The two biggest unions, the teachers and District Council 37, appear to back the proposal.

But opposition has surfaced from leaders of the city’s uniformed unions, who fear they may be asked for health care givebacks to fund teacher raises.

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After reaching the outlines of his deal with City Hall, Mulgrew began pressing leaders of the labor committee to move quickly to reach an agreement on the the health care issue.

If the steering committee representing all the unions approves the health care savings proposal Friday, the entire coalition of nearly 100 labor unions will then vote Monday.

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But at a heated meeting of the labor coalition Wednesday morning, leaders of the city’s police, fire and correction unions sought to derail the fast-developing deal, revealing a potential conflict with the “civilian” unions. 

At one point in the meeting, Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, threatened a lawsuit and blasted Mulgrew for orchestrating the deal to largely benefit teachers. 

“Mulgrew doesn’t negotiate for my members,” said one leader of a uniformed union. “They’re asking us to vote on something without documentation of what’s in it. That’s ridiculous.”

Hey, welcome to our world, Norman, where the UFT leadership puts stuff on us without much in the way of details and says "Trust us!"

In any case, the need for a Municipal Labor Committee vote on the "health care savings" that will fund the raises in the final years of the contract means the contract is by no means finalized.

The Times reported that the other unions were also pissed that Mulgrew and the UFT got little in the way of raises after the initial 8% from the previous pattern.

The Gonzalez article seems to substantiate that - sounds like 1% raises for the years after 2009/2010 that are covered by the old pattern until the later years of the 9 year contract when the raises get larger.

Or maybe I should say, if they get larger, since those raises are contingent upon "savings" from the health care fund that all the unions have to agree to give.