Public Employee Press

Highway Supervisors eye huge raises

Supervisor Highway Repairers are pushing for pay increases of possibly as much as $20,000 and back pay awards of $80,000 to $100,000 as part of a struggle that began six years ago and could go on much longer.

Their heightened hopes are based on the Comptroller’s finding — which was recently upheld by an administrative law judge — that their pay is significantly lower than similar private sector workers.

“This is what unionism is all about,” said President Mickey McFarland of Dept. of Transportation Supervisory Employees Local 1157. The local awaits the Comptroller’s pending final determination establishing the prevailing rate of pay for their title. The city has the right to challenge the determination in court, a time-consuming process.

Under Section 220 of the state Labor Law, rather than accepting a negotiated economic agreement, certain blue collar public employees through their union can seek an order from the Comptroller requiring the city to adjust their pay to reflect the prevailing rate for their work in the private sector.

Falling behind
Feeling that they had fallen far behind what road building firms pay, Local 1157 members voted to file a complaint with the Comptroller to seek the prevailing wages for their work. McFarland praised his members for sticking together while going without raises as their prevailing-rate claim proceeded for several years.

“It has been very hard for our members,” McFarland said. “We have families. We have mortgages. Heating costs have doubled and food is up. But the city has not been paying us what we are legally entitled to, so we were ready to make the sacrifice.”

OATH judge upholds Comptroller
In January, Administrative Law Judge Kevin F. Casey of the city Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings rejected a city challenge and upheld the Comptroller’s preliminary finding that the pay of Local 1157 members falls short of their private-sector counterparts. As PEP went to press, the Comptroller was readying a final determination.

“We have done a lot of work on Local 1157’s case, and we are very happy we got a favorable decision from the ALJ,” said DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Dennis Sullivan. “We are eager to receive the final determination, and we will proceed from there.”

The city could still go to court to overturn the Comptroller’s determination or could seek to negotiate further with the union; the union can go to court to enforce the determination.

The dispute dates back to March 2000, when McFarland filed a labor law complaint, formally notifying the Comptroller that the local would exercise its right to seek a wage survey, which it did later that year. From the beginning, Leonard Polletta of the DC 37 Legal Dept. worked closely with McFarland at every step of the case.

“This victory shows that DC 37 is very serious about enforcing our members’ rights under the prevailing-rate law,” said Polletta. He helped prepare two Local 1157 members, Lou Vaccaro and Marc Reed, to testify at the OATH hearing, and he questioned them before the ALJ to bolster the Comptroller’s findings.

“We will continue to pursue prevailing-rate issues relentlessly on behalf of our members, as we have in this case,” said DC 37 General Counsel Eddie Demmings.

Demmings noted that many of the DC 37 locals that include prevailing-rate workers are now seeking wage surveys from the Comptroller, with the assistance of the DC 37 Legal and Research departments.

“Mickey deserves a lot of praise here, because no one was willing to take this on before,” said Local 1157’s Mike Perry.

“It can be tough to raise a family in New York on $50,000,” said Perry, noting that many local members have gone more than five years without a raise. “My second child is starting Catholic school next year, and it will cost us $500 a month. One of our members has four kids, and it’s difficult for him to support his family.”

Perry said that although they knew that the case could take a long time, members were committed to sticking it out because of the principle of the matter.

“This isn’t just about a raise,” Reed said. “This is about enforcing what we are legally entitled to.”