Last week, at a Manhattan news conference that was also “live-streamed” on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s website, the chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the president of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) reflecting a tentative contract deal that will shape the MTA’s labor compensation costs for years to come. Read More
Rejecting almost every cost-sharing proposal suggested by the management side, a state arbitration panel has awarded a two-year, 6.6 percent increase in base salaries to members of the police officers union in the Village of Rockville Centre in Nassau County... Read More
The ink was barely dry on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s local government “restructuring” bill yesterday when the governor made two more concessions to unions on the issue of binding arbitration. Read More
A pending change to the state’s binding arbitration law covering police and firefighter contract disputes will not cover pending contract impasses involving firefighters in Syracuse thanks to a last-minute tweak of the bill by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Read More
AFSCME, the nation’s biggest public-sector labor union, is mounting a statewide ad campaignclaiming that “politicians in Albany” want to “cut the pensions of firefighters, teachers and nurses by 40 percent.” Read More
Governor Cuomo’s proposal to cap arbitration awards for police and firefighters is not included in the Senate or Assembly budget bills. This may be blessing in disguise: as argued here, Cuomo’s original proposal didn’t go nearly far enough. Since the arbitration law expires on June 30, the governor remains in a commanding position to demand more. Read More
Don’t look now, but the Legislature is a step away from passing a straight four-year extension of the Taylor Law’s police and binding arbitration provision, which is due to sunset June 30. The Senate extender bill (sponsored by Martin Golden, R-Brooklyn) was reported out of the Civil Service and Pensions Committee last week and advanced to third reading on the floor calendar this week. Read More
“Mandate relief remains elusive,” is one of the state-related headlines in today’s Albany Times Union — and that much, at least, is true. Unfortunately, the articlebeneath the headline repeats a familiar canard about the origins of the Triborough Amendment. Read More