The New York City Central Labor Council, the umbrella organization representing more then a million workers, lost two powerful unions this week because of a controversy over its president.

A spokesman for 32BJ, which represents 70,000 building service workers, said Thursday the union had withdrawn from the labor council. The Hotel Trades Council quit the umbrella group earlier this week.

Source: WNYC Continue Reading This Article Here

Leaders of some of New York’s most influential unions are discussing abandoning Gov. David A. Paterson as he prepares to run for a full term next year, a sweeping defection that could prove lethal to his hopes of winning his party’s nomination.

The leaders, who represent a broad cross section of labor groups, expressed concern, in a series of interviews, about whether Mr. Paterson, who has been troubled by low job-approval ratings and a loss of confidence in his ability to tackle the state’s financial problems, can rebound in time for next year’s election.

That such conversations are taking place among a constituency that plays such a crucial role in New York Democratic politics signals the tenuous position that Mr. Paterson finds himself in, particularly as Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo considers the possibility of challenging him in a Democratic primary next year.

Source: NY Times Continue Reading This Article Here

Facing a crisis in its pension fund, 1199, New York’s giant health care union, reached an innovative settlement on Monday that calls for forgoing nearly a billion dollars in raises for 145,000 union members so that hospitals can increase their pension contributions to safeguard future retirement benefits.

The union, formally called 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, agreed to a wage freeze for next year, but also — in a move that parallels Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal for municipal employees — accepted less generous pensions for future hires.

With the union’s pension fund losing $3.5 billion — or one-third its value — in recent years, mostly because of losses in stock market investments, 1199 feared that the fund would have to reduce promised pension payments to not only 48,000 current retirees, but also tens of thousands of current workers.

Source: NY Times Continue Reading This Article Here

Dockworkers, public-school teachers and Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano lead an army of special interests, with nearly $70 million in their campaign coffers, according to an analysis of PAC money.

The first-of-its-kind survey by the New York Public Interest Research Group of more than 3,300 active campaign accounts found political-action committees accounted for more than a third of the $203 million in campaign kitties as of mid-summer.

That sum eclipses the $39 million grand total of all Republican candidates, clubs and party committees in the state, the analysis revealed. It falls short, however, of the $89 million held by Democratic groups and office seekers.

“PACs have always had incredible clout,” said NYPIRG’s Blair Horner. “This shows how big that clout is.”

The International Longshoremen’s Association – with $11 million in the bank – is by far the state’s largest PAC, followed by the American Resort Development Association, which claims $8.5 million.

But both groups spend much of their money out of state.

Locally, the undisputed leader in campaign clout is the $7.2 million political fund fueled by contributions from the 600,000-member United Federation of Teachers.

The group, historically among the Democratic Party’s biggest benefactors, is leading a statewide advertising assault on Democratic Gov. Paterson’s plan to cap school property-tax hikes.

Golisano, a businessman, politician and owner of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, became the state’s fourth-biggest special interest in terms of campaign dollars with the $5 million check he wrote to start his political committee, Responsible New York, earlier this summer.

Ironically, he’s pledged to use the money to counter the influence of special-interest groups.

Golisano’s committee is followed closely by the $4 million fund run by 1199/SEIU. The labor union is one of the largest backers of the Senate Republican majority and among the biggest opponents of Paterson’s proposed $505 million Medicaid cut.

Democrats described NYPIRG’s analysis – which shows Democrats leading Republicans in campaign cash by a 2-to-1 margin – as confirming the party’s growing dominance in state politics.

Democrats now control every statewide office and may seize the state Senate this year.

“If you look at it individually, historically, the Democrats have been greatly outspent, despite the Democratic enrollment advantage in parts of the state,” state Democratic Chairwoman June O’Neill said. “Things are changing.”

Republican State Executive Director Matt Walter said the NYPIRG numbers did not reflect a closer fund-raising balance in battleground districts.

“You can add up numbers to say whatever you want. The reality is that Republicans who are running this year are better candidates . . . and will have all the resources they’re going to need to win this fall,” Walter said.

Source: NY Post

The city’s Board of Elections is violating the law by not using a statewide voter database to help get rid of duplicate registrations, state election officials ruled.

The state Board of Elections, in a ruling this summer, gave the city agency until next Wednesday to start using the database and reduce as many duplicate and outdated registrations as possible before September’s primary.

“It is a state and federal requirement that we follow these procedures,” said Robert Brehm, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections. “We want them to start.”

Under the federal Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA, the state must operate a statewide voter database. Local boards are required to use it to update their rolls and remove duplications that can occur when a person moves and files a new registration, Brehm said.

The city board never accessed the database, which was activated last year, Brehm said.

Marcus Cederqvist, executive director of the city Board of Elections, said the city needs assurances that the database contains valid information.

He said state law requires all new voter registrations to be approved by both Republican and Democratic election commissioners.

“We have no assurance from the state or anyone else that that is being done in a bipartisan manner anywhere else in the state,” Cederqvist said.

The city board this week filed a complaint with the state charging that the database violated state law.

Brehm said there’s no reason to believe that other boards of elections were acting improperly.

The state’s ruling stemmed from an April complaint by Robert McFeeley, a Staten Island Republican and information services manager in the borough president’s office. He charged that the city’s voter registration rolls were hopelessly outdated

McFeeley said he often used city voter rolls to send out constituent service mailings, and that as many as 10% would be returned because of invalid addresses.

“My sister moved to Pennsylvania 10 years ago and she is still on the rolls,” McFeeley said.

Source: NY Daily News

Telecommunications company Verizon and two unions representing 65,000 workers who had threatened to strike within hours agreed Sunday on a new three-year contract that provides 10.5 percent wage increases and changes in retirement benefits.

The pact, which must be ratified by union members, was hailed as a “breakthrough agreement in many ways” by Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen. He said it “provides a framework for growth at Verizon and a good standard of living with careers for our members.”

The deal also extends union recognition to 600 former MCI technicians who had sought it since joining Verizon Communications Inc. two years ago, the union said. Verizon said another 900 temporary employees would be regularized.

Verizon’s executive vice president Marc C. Reed said the contract would allow the company to remain “focused on delivering to our customers the best in broadband, communications and entertainment.”

No date was immediately set for union members to vote on the deal, which consists of many smaller contracts.

The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers had threatened to strike at 12:01 a.m. Monday if no agreement was reached.

A walkout could have delayed installations and repairs of telephone and broadband lines. An 18-day strike in 2000 left a backlog of 230,000 orders and repair requests.

A previous contract expired a week ago, but union members continued working as negotiators discussed the new one.

Company spokesman Eric Rabe said they bargained by phone and e-mail Saturday, broke for a few hours of rest and resumed talks on Sunday afternoon.

Job security and health care were among the main points of contention. They were negotiated in 2003, after a threatened strike was averted when federal mediators joined the talks. That settlement was for a five-year contract.

The proposed new contract applies to workers in 10 northeastern and mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C., 50,000 of them CWA members and 15,000 in the IBEW.

IBEW president Ed Hill said the talks “met our goals to protect the retirees who helped to build this company and … ensure future jobs for union members.”

The union workers are in the traditional telephone part of the company, which is engaged in the labor-intensive process of replacing most of its copper phone lines with optical fiber.

A key element of the agreement was a provision for the company to contribute a fixed dollar amount per year of service toward future retiree health care costs. In addition, Verizon said it and the unions would work together on a health care reform initiative.

Source: AMNY

As political rituals go, it was one of Albany’s most predictable.

Every two years, a state law that required public employees to pay their unions’ dues regardless of whether they joined would near expiration. And every two years, the Legislature would renew the law. For more than three decades, unions pushed to make it permanent. But lawmakers, mainly Republicans in the State Senate who wanted the Legislature to have some degree of leverage over the state’s powerful public sector unions, blocked those attempts, arguing that a permanent extension of the law would amount to a big giveaway to organized labor.

Now, Gov. David A. Paterson has given the state’s public-employee unions their long-desired victory. On Wednesday, his office announced that he had signed a law making union dues mandatory in perpetuity for all public employees who are covered by unions even if they opt not to join.

The law affects mostly state workers, as well as county employees, public school teachers and other civil servants.

The Legislature overwhelmingly approved the bill last month. Similar bills had passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly before, only to fail in the Senate. But with Republicans in a pitched battle to preserve their thin majority in the Senate, the party seemed unwilling to block a priority of organized labor.

It passed the Senate last month by a 62-to-0 vote. The Assembly approved it 140 to 5.

Labor leaders said on Wednesday that making the law permanent guaranteed that unions would have the money to adequately represent members and nonmembers alike, which they were required to do under a state law known as the Taylor Law.

“In public employment, they have the right not to belong, but I still must represent them,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers. “If under the law we’re obligated to represent every employee, then it’s only fair that every employee pays something toward the cost of being represented.”

But critics of a permanent policy said that the new law was far too generous.

“It’s a very, very significant present to the labor unions,” said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative-leaning research group.

“What it does is it removes one of the few remaining leverage points people still have over unions. And management, which is the taxpayer, has very, very little remaining leverage.”

A spokesman for the governor, Errol Cockfield, pointed out that because the law had been renewed every two years since 1977, the first year it was enacted, it has long been de facto state policy.

He added that in the governor’s estimation, it was a fair practice to make employees who declined union membership but were nonetheless represented pay dues.

Others said the law was a major concession to organized labor, which has been criticized as getting its way far too often in Albany. Earlier this year, the Legislature approved — over the objection of New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg — a bill that banned student test scores from being factored in when tenure was being considered for teachers.

The New York State School Boards Association, which urged Mr. Paterson to veto the union dues legislation, said in a letter to the governor that the bill amounted to “denying school districts an important bargaining tool.”

The association added, “This legislation grants employee unions one of their primary bargaining goals without requiring that they negotiate for it.”

Darcy Wells, a spokeswoman for the New York State Public Employees Federation, rejected that.

“Finally, the governor has stepped up and made it permanent,” Ms. Wells said.

“This has been a long time coming, and we think it’s the right thing to do.”

Source: NY Times

As Con Edison works to keep up with the demand of the hot summer months, thousands of workers who keep the electricity flowing are threatening to walk off the job, if they don’t get a new contract.

The members of Local 1-2 voted to strike if a new contract is not reached by the end of the month. The negotiations are scheduled to begin today.

The union represents workers who operate power plants, maintain infrastructure, and respond to emergencies. Members say the main sticking points are wages, health benefits, pensions and advancement in job titles.

The union’s old contract expired over the weekend.

Read more about the Con Ed strike here

Source: NY1