Suing To Block Bonuses, Mamdani Triggers ‘All-Out War’ With Teachers

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration filed a lawsuit to block public school paraprofessionals — some of the city’s lowest paid workers — from receiving one-off bonuses of $10,000, launching a showdown the teachers’ union president has promised will be an “all-out war.”The mayor has made no secret of his current opposition to the bill, which passed in the City Council last month without a single dissenting vote. Despite supporting the pay bump as a candidate, the mayor changed his mind after taking office.He declined to sign the bill into law, though he could not veto it because it passed with such a large majority, with enthusiastic backing from Speaker Julie Menin as well as the city’s teachers’ union. On Wednesday it lapsed into law.The mayor’s office has said the payouts, which the council dubbed “RESPECT checks,” amount to wage increases granted without going through collective bargaining, a violation of New York’s Taylor Law. “By circumventing that process and attempting to increase pay for school paraprofessionals by legislative fiat (at a cost, by its own conservative estimate, of $324.9 million), the Council has set a perilous and unlawful precedent with huge fiscal consequences,” the mayor’s office said in their filing Wednesday.The suit was not a surprise. The president of the United Federation of Teachers, Michael Mulgrew, whose organization represents the city’s educators, was already girding for a fight last month, when he told The New York Times: “If we have to go to all-out war with him over this, then we’re willing to do that.” Union leaders doubled down on that position Wednesday in a message to their members obtained by Chalkbeat. “We are prepared to engage in a legal fight for the RESPECT check and the paraprofessionals who keep our schools running,” the email said.The union says starting salaries for paraprofessionals, most of whom accompany students with special needs through their classes, start just shy of $32,000 in New York City. That is lower than the average earnings of a new hire at a McDonalds in the city according to Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter. The union has blamed pattern bargaining, in which every pay grade from principals to paraprofessionals receive the same percentage salary increase, for the growing disparity in educators’ salaries. The poor pay has led to difficulty hiring and retaining aides. If allowed to proceed, the bill allows the council to keep reauthorizing the checks until the school system no longer faces a shortage or ends pattern bargaining.“The truth is paraprofessionals are not paid enough to survive in New York City,” Mr. Mulgrew said at a City Council hearing in November, adding that “many paraprofessionals are working two to three jobs because it’s too difficult to survive on their Department of Education salary alone” while others are “sleeping in homeless shelters because they are unable to pay their rent.” “This is shameful,” Mr. Mulgrew said, “especially when it is within the city’s control to change this reality.”

Suing To Block Bonuses, Mamdani Triggers ‘All-Out War’ With Teachers

Suing To Block Bonuses, Mamdani Triggers ‘All-Out War’ With Teachers

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