Cuomo May Break CSEA Contract Pattern For MTA, Has Implications For City Contract Negotiations

James Eterno at ICEUFT posted this morning that in its municipal contract negotiations the city is offering the pattern first set by Governor Cuomo and CSEA back in 2010 - a five year contract with 0% for the first three years, 2% in the fourth year and 2% in the fifth year.

Cuomo said publicly that the CSEA pattern set the pattern for municipal contracts as well as state contracts, although in the past these two patterns had been different.

But this morning the NY Times reports that Cuomo is on the verge of breaking the CSEA/PEF pattern to avoid an election-year transit strike at the MTA and LIRR:

More than two years after its contract expired, the union representing New York City’s subway and bus workers is involved in intense negotiations with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and appears on the cusp of reaching a new contract, union and government officials said Wednesday.

The officials said the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, was likely to receive a sizable raise as part of a lengthy contract for 34,000 transit workers as the authority appears to have moved away from its earlier demands for a three-year wage freeze.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials had been insisting that unions at NYC Transit and the Long Island Rail Road accept the same three-year pay freeze that the main state employee unions had accepted, although labor leaders predicted that the demand would lead to a strike by railroad workers in July.

Vincent Pitta, a lawyer for the Transport Workers Union, said the anticipated deal for the union — by establishing a new, more generous pattern — could help avoid a railroad strike. Such a strike would affect 300,000 daily commuters and could hurt Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo when he is running for re-election.

“Frankly, it’s an election year,” Mr. Pitta said. “I don’t think any governor would want a strike on the Long Island Rail Road in an election year.”

Does de Blasio still get to claim the CSEA pattern if the TWU 100 gets a more generous pattern from the state?

Let's just say it changes things

Government officials are debating how a deal between the Transport Workers Union and the authority could affect the city’s own municipal labor talks. Governor Cuomo had been urging city officials to adhere to the three-year freeze pattern that he had won from the state’s unions, but the city’s unions were bridling at such a demand.

But if the Transport Workers win a contract that does not include such a pay freeze, that would mean there would be less pressure on Mayor Bill de Blasio to win a wage freeze.

At the same time, if the transit workers receive a contract that contains substantial raises, that could increase pressure on Mr. de Blasio to award sizable raises, when the city already says it cannot afford the billions of dollars in retroactive raises that the city’s municipal unions are seeking.

TWU 100 has Cuomo over a barrel and they ought to press their demands home.

He doesn't want a strike right before an election, particularly since the MTA doesn't have a leg to stand on by demanding the three year wage freeze after arbitrators returned a suggested deal that contained 17 percent wage hikes and no freeze.

And if TWU 100 gets a more generous pattern, then that breaks the CSEA/PEF pattern and neither Cuomo nor de Blasio can claim city unions have to take the three year wage freeze in a five year contract.

I would argue in any case that the CSEA contract doesn't set the pattern for city contracts, but if Cuomo steps in and forces the MTA to give TWU 100 anything other than a three year wage freeze and 4% over the last two years of a five year contract, the argument that the CSEA pattern stands for city contracts is dead.

There Must Be NO CONCESSIONS In The Next UFT Contract

NYC Educator and I had a discussion about pattern bargaining for the UFT contract.

When the last UFT contract expired, the pattern for municipal contracts at the time was 8% over two years without concessions.

Mayor Bloomberg decided that the city would not negotiate that contract with the UFT because of the recession, claiming the city no longer had the money, and the comptroller at the time, Bill Thompson, agreed.

And so, here we are, without the 8% raise that we were due as part of the pattern, which, as NYC Educator notes in his latest post, is a sacrosanct pattern, at least when the salary increases are negligible or in the favor of the city.

I am of the opinion that the UFT will completely forget about the old pattern when a new mayor is elected.

I'm a bit cynical around these guys and my feeling is, they'll look to screw us and hope that most of us don't remember the old pattern (or weren't even in the system when the old pattern was the pattern.)

I suspect that after all the givebacks and concessions we teachers have made as part of the new teacher evaluation system - the lost tenure protections (two "ineffectives" and you are fired is lost tenure protections), the extra paperwork, the extra meetings, the mandated lesson plan formatting for Danielson (yes, I know they say it is not mandated, but if you don't do it the way Ms. Charlotte wants it done, you will be "i-rated") - they will STILL negotiate a pattern-breaking new contract with the next mayor that includes concessions on time, days and/or health care.

NYC Educator said he hoped I was wrong.

I said I hoped I was wrong too, but like him, I remember the "scrapes the skies" contract of 2005 when they gave on seniority rights, bathroom duty, extra time, extra days and a host of other things and told us the contract was the best thing since the Empire State Building.

I have been telling everybody at my school that there must be NO CONCESSIONS in this next contract - not on work protections, not on time or days, not on health care costs.

We have ALREADY given our concessions in the form of the Danielson rubric jive, all the extra work and extra meetings and extra time we have to put in as part of the APPR teacher evaluation system.

If the UFT leadership comes back to us with a "scrapes the skies" contract proposal that offers any concessions at all, I will make sure everybody at my school and everybody who reads this blog on the Internet knows what happened with the old pattern, how much work we have taken on already with the new APPR system, and why we should not make any concessions at all to get the raises we were due as part of the old contract bargaining pattern.

I will call it the "scrap the dogcrap off your shoe" contract.

That has a ring to it, doesn't it?

And it will be a perfect characterization of any contract they negotiate that has concessions in it after all the concessions we have given the city and the state for free.