Deal Reached That Averts a Walkout by Doormen

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/nyregion/21strike.html?src=me


Michael Appleton for The New York Times

The union members were represented by a team led by Mike Fishman, second from left. The owners had a committee of about a dozen led by Howard Rothschild, second from right, president of the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations.


By PATRICK McGEEHAN
Published: April 21, 2010


The owners of more than 3,200 apartment buildings in New York City reached an agreement on a new labor contract with the union that represents about 30,000 doormen, porters, janitors and building superintendents, averting a strike that was due to begin at 7 a.m. Wednesday.

The talks went right up to the midnight strike deadline, as they often have in the past, with the union resisting the owners’ demands for cuts in health care and other benefits. In the end, the owners agreed to a new four-year contract that includes a total pay increase of nearly 10 percent and no significant cuts in benefits for the workers, an official with the union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, said.

In exchange, the union agreed to try to help the owners find ways to reduce the cost of providing the workers’ health benefits by $70 million annually starting in 2012.

The agreement headed off what would have been the first strike by the doormen since a walkout in 1991 that lasted 12 days and left garbage piling up in front of some buildings where doormen were picketing. If the doormen and other service workers had gone on strike, residents of the affected buildings would have had to perform their own chores, like sorting mail, screening visitors, hauling garbage out to the curb and operating elevators.

After the agreement was reached, both sides said they had reasons to be satisfied, and loud cheers were heard through the doors of the meeting rooms in the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, where the negotiations were held.

FULL 2 page story at link.