RETIRING CITY LABOR COMMISSONER BOB LINN LEAVES UNDEFEATED AGAINST UFT IN BARGAINING

Bob Linn is retiring as the city's Labor Commissioner. He is three for three for the city in wins over the UFT in collective bargaining as the city's chief negotiator working for both Mayor Ed Koch and Mayor Bill de Blasio. The Chief Leader has a lengthy feature on the retiring Commissioner. It is very revealing.

The focus here is going to be on Linn's dealing with the UFT, first for Koch in 1985 and then under de Blasio in 2014.

From The Chief article:

Thirty-four years ago, five months after his bitter disagreement with Mr. Gotbaum (DC 37) over a minor contract detail that he concedes could’ve been resolved without the agita, Mr. Linn cemented his credentials as a smart, resourceful tactician in a bigger battle with the UFT.

For much of the previous decade, the union had allowed the starting salary for Teachers to lag, focusing its contract gains on members higher up on the pay scale while sometimes agreeing to freeze the rate for new instructors. When then-UFT President Al Shanker was accused of structuring his deals to secure the voting support of his senior members, union officials would respond that, whatever political edge he derived from this posture, it also made practical sense given the years of the fiscal crisis and its aftermath in which no new Teachers were being hired.

Teacher Shortage Resulted

Whatever his motivation, by 1985 the city was having serious problems in recruiting and retaining quality Teachers. By early spring, Mr. Shanker withdrew from a civilian bargaining coalition that included DC 37 and Teamsters Local 237 and declared his intention to pursue arbitration if the Koch administration did not do something significant to address the Teacher shortage.

Mr. Linn reacted by swiftly reaching terms first with DC 37 and then with Local 237 that established a pattern he could use in arbitration, rather than risk allowing the UFT to go before a third party and focus the discussions on how far behind his members’ salaries were those paid in neighboring suburbs. While the UFT typically opted for a nonbinding form of arbitration known as fact-finding, in this case it chose a process known as Last Offer Binding Arbitration, under which each side submits demands and a panel chooses between them, without the latitude to split the difference.

Mr. Shanker insisted problems attracting and retaining Teachers touched every step of the pay scale, and therefore hikes significantly exceeding the DC 37 pattern providing 16 percent in raises over three years were warranted. Mr. Linn countered that while a big raise in starting salary was justified and so was doing something extra for Teachers with at least 15 years’ service, those in between should be limited to the DC 37 raises to preserve bargaining stability.

The three arbitrators chose the city’s last offer, boosting starting pay more than 37 percent, from $14,527 to $20,000, within a year and giving those with at least 15 years on the job significantly more longevity pay, along with raises slightly exceeding `17 percent. All other Teachers, however, were limited to the pattern raises, with the arbitrators stating that “we are persuaded that the relationship or linkage between the major municipal unions is an important factor which cannot be ignored or minimized.”

You only had to note the sour look on Mr. Shanker’s face at a UFT press conference following the award, and the absence of Sandy Feldman, who was about to succeed him as the union’s president, to know the New York Times got it wrong in declaring the award to be a victory for the union. It was a high-stakes triumph for Mr. Linn, who afterward touted the virtues of that kind of arbitration, while Ms. Feldman and the labor lawyer who helped prepare the union case, future UFT President Randi Weingarten, never again tried LOBA.

2014 Deal More Satisfying

Yet Mr. Linn expressed greater satisfaction with the deal he reached with the UFT in the spring of 2014 in which, again, major media outlets misread it as a bonanza for the union when in fact its most significant aspect was the return to the bargaining stability that Mr. Bloomberg had disrupted. (One other link to the 1985 UFT contract was that Marty Scheinman, one of the arbitrators who decided against the UFT’s demands, played a key role as a mediator in narrowing the differences between Mr. Linn and UFT President Mike Mulgrew.)

“There are a number of things I’m really proud of,” Mr. Linn said, sitting in his Rector St. office winding down his work as he prepared to turn over the job to his First Deputy, Renee Campion. “The first is, all of the unsettled contracts and health-care [provisions] that had not been modified in any serious way” being worked out barely four months after Mr. de Blasio took office five years ago. “We did it for the most part in contracts that were ratified by large majorities and were generally regarded as responsible settlements in the public’s interest.”

The back-pay obligation, which Mr. de Blasio’s opponent in the mayoral election, Joe Lhota, a former First Deputy for Mayor Rudy Giuliani, had predicted could total $10 billion if the UFT got the two 4-percent raises Mr. Bloomberg previously agreed to with nearly 60 percent of his workforce, was finessed without putting real pressure on the city’s finances. The key was Mr. Mulgrew’s willingness, while also accepting raises totaling just 10 percent over the final seven years of a record nine-year contract, to stretch out the back-pay disbursement beyond the contract’s duration.

Traditionally, the first employee paychecks after a contract is ratified are used to implement whichever raises have already taken effect, and the second check is when the back pay shows up. Mr. Mulgrew agreed to defer a large amount of the money—which for senior UFT members approached $55,000 apiece—so that the final 75 percent would be paid in three equal chunks in October 2018, 2019 and 2020.

 Let us repeat the main line on 2014:

The key was Mr. Mulgrew’s willingness, while also accepting raises totaling just 10 percent over the final seven years of a record nine-year contract, to stretch out the back-pay disbursement beyond the contract’s duration.

Double defeat for UFT members. A very low salary increase and the payments for retro that we were owed stretched out way beyond the contract's duration. For how little this is costing the city, we go back to this estimate from the Independent Budget Office that ICEblog printed in 2017.

While IBO does not have an exact cost for how large these retroactive lump sums will be, because they are directly linked to the number of union members who will be employed on the days the payments are scheduled to be made, we can estimate the maximum cost of these lump sums based upon the total PS costs for pedagogical employees in 2009-2011.  Based upon the total PS costs from those years we estimate that the entire lump sum payment would be a maximum of $560 million if every member were to remain employed by the DOE through 10/1/20. 

 This total would translate to a maximum of $70 million paid out in 2017 and $140 million paid out in 2018 – 2020.  These funds, if not already accounted for in DOE’s financial plan, would increase the city-funds portion of DOE’s budget by less than one percent in 2017 and around one percent in each subsequent year.   

 IBO has not made any estimates about what the final cost of this portion of UFT’s collective bargaining agreement would be although we assume, as a result of attrition and other separations, that it will somewhat less than the $560 million.   

 While I can’t say for certain, and I am looking into it further, I do believe that these costs are included in DOE’s financial plan.  As you surmised there likely is no breakdown of PS funding which would allow you to see the budget for regular salary segregated from these lump sums.  

The 2019 contract with its less than stellar raises adds to Linn's winning streak against the UFT. Linn truly saved the taxpayers money that should have gone to us.

When it comes to contract negotiations, I think we can say for sure it was: 

City Bob Linn 3 

UFT Shanker- Feldman-Weingarten 0.

Enjoy that enormous 2% you are getting as the new contract takes effect.