Mayor Strikes Tentative Deal With Sanitation Workers

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After striking a tentative deal with the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association yesterday, the mayor can add sanitation workers to the list of municipal employees who have signed contracts with the city in the months leading up to November’s election.


The deal will include a wage increase of more than 17.1% over a 51-month period covering November 23, 2002, through March 1, 2007, according to the mayor’s office.


That percentage wage increase is more than was offered in recent municipal contracts with the teachers union – 15% over 52 months – and the police – 10.25% increase over about two years.


Like the police, sanitation workers will receive 5% raises for the contract’s first two years. Over the next two years, they are scheduled to receive raises of 3% and 3.15%, bringing the total compounded increase to more than 17%.


Mayor Bloomberg said the new contract will be paid for with productivity savings.


“This landmark agreement, including the differentials and productivity payments, is funded through productivity savings generated by sanitation workers whose day-to-day efforts continue to improve the quality of life in New York City,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. “We have all observed the men and women of the Department of Sanitation handle some of the biggest challenges that New York City faces, and we are pleased to have reached this important agreement through the collaborative and cooperative process of collective bargaining.”


The president of the 6,000-member sanitation workers’ union, Harry Nespoli, told 1010 WINS that he will recommend the contract be approved.


The contract will allow the Sanitation Department to lay off 200 workers, the New York Times reported on its Web site.


Newly hired sanitation workers will earn a starting salary of $26,000 beginning in 2006, just higher than the recently negotiated starting salary of a police officer, $25,100.At the end of the new contract, a sanitation worker’s maximum salary will be $57,392.


According to the mayor’s office, productivity gains will be generated by using one sanitation worker instead of two on special one-worker trucks; increasing tonnage collection per shift, and by sending trucks to dump sites as part of their regular route. In an e-mail, Christy Setzer, a spokeswoman for Democratic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, called the contract “a dirty deal.”


“After three years of doing nothing, Mike Bloomberg’s presenting sanitation workers with a contract that’s going to lay off workers, slash starting salaries, and make recruitment more difficult. Too bad sanitation workers had to wait so long, for so little,” Ms. Setzer wrote.


The contract also stipulates that the city contribute more annually to the sanitation workers’ welfare fund and toward uniforms.


Still outstanding for the mayor: striking a deal with the firefighters’ union, the 9,000-member Uniformed Firefighters Association.


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