Co-op / Condo Boards Relieved as Bronx Workers Get Contract, Averting Strike

"We fashioned this settlement behind what we did in the rest of the city, in trying to commit to finding ways to cut health-care costs and save money within the plan," Kyle Bragg, vice president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, told Habitat, referring to the April 2010 contract with the other four New York City boroughs, in which workers agreed to find ways to reduce their health-benefit costs by $70 million annually starting in 2012. "

William Schur, president of The Bronx Realty Advisory Board (BRAB), did not return a call for comment. 

The agreement, reached Monday evening before the 12:01 a.m. Tuesday deadline, calls for an approximately 6 percent wage increase over the four years the contract covers. The employer-paid defined-benefit pension and family health care provisions of the previous three-year contract remain intact, Bragg said, adding that deductibles did not go up.

"We were able to keep what's most important to our families — affordable health care and pensions," said Angel Ortega, a father of five and a Riverdale super, in a statement yesterday. "It was a tough few months, but we're glad we didn't inconvenience the residents and are eager to keep serving the Bronx."

Bronx Cheers

The Bronx historically has had a separate contract from the rest of the city's boroughs, having formerly been under the aegis of Local 33. That local merged with 32BJ some years ago, though the borough's union administration has not been integrated. The union negotiates with the BRAB for The Bronx and with the Realty Advisory Board for Labor Relations (RAB) for the remainder of the city.

As well, the massive Co-op City complex in The Bronx has its own separate workers contract, for which the union negotiates with the management company RiverBay. The 500 Co-op City workers were locked out on June 1 in the early stages of acrimonious contract negotiations, returning to work June 8 as talks then continued.

Bragg, in his role as union leader, lamented the most visible union loss in recent times, among Wisconsin state workers stripped of most of their collective bargaining rights. "It's appalling to think that government, who's responsible for the welfare of the people, would be engaged in such heinous activity as trying to curtail the right to bargain. The right to bargain is a basic right."

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