The Bloomberg administration and the New York City teachers’ union reached a tentative deal last night on a contract that would increase pay by 7.1 percent over two years and essentially forge a peace agreement between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the union from now through the end of his term in 2009. þþThe surprisingly early agreement will, for the first time, lift base pay for the most senior teachers above $100,000 a year, an important and symbolic threshold that brings salaries for city educators closer to those in the suburbs. þþThe agreement, announced late last night by the mayor and the union president, Randi Weingarten, comes 11 months before the current contract expires, in October 2007. It contrasts starkly with the city’s failed efforts to reach an accord with school supervisors, including principals, whose contract expired on June 30, 2003. þþ“This proposed contract was not negotiated retroactively,” Mr. Bloomberg declared at a news conference last night at City Hall. “Rather, it is an agreement we’ve come to nearly a year before the current contract expires, the earliest date before expiration that we have ever reached a new collective bargaining agreement.”þþThe mayor spoke just hours before New Yorkers headed to the polls with Eliot Spitzer leading widely in the race for governor. Mr. Spitzer has promised to comply with a court order mandating at least $4.7 billion more a year in aid for the city’s schools, but insists that the city contribute. þþMr. Bloomberg has said that the city should not pay an extra dime, and the contract deal seemed to be intended to send a message that the city and its powerful teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, would stand together. þþ“New York City is working hard to put more money into our schools even as the state has failed to address its responsibilities,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the news conference. “And to those who say that the city must increase its share in funding, I want to point out that we have already put more than $3.5 billion in city monies into our schools every year.” The early and amicable agreement with the union was a sharp turnaround from the rancor of the last talks, which were settled just before Mr. Bloomberg’s re-election.þþThis time the city extracted no productivity increases or other concessions, which seemed to be part of a larger strategy by the Bloomberg administration to pave the way for separate talks aimed at achieving crucial savings on health care and pension costs, which have climbed sharply in recent years. þþUnlike the pact reached last year, which changed teachers’ work schedules and increased instructional time for the city’s nearly 1.1 million schoolchildren, the new deal is straightforward. It provides raises of 2 percent at the start of the contract on Oct. 13, 2007 and 5 percent effective May 19, 2008. It runs until Oct. 31, 2009, and includes a one-time upfront bonus of $750 per employee, payable in January.þþWith these raises, the maximum salary will rise to $100,049 from $93,416 and starting pay will rise to $45,530 from $42,512. The deal covers the city’s 83,000 teachers and about 30,000 other school employees. þþIn July, in a separate deal with District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, the mayor appeared to abandon his longtime insistence that unions agree to money-saving concessions to help finance their raises, and instead provided raises of 10 percent over 32 months without givebacks like the one-year wage freeze in the previous contract.þþBut negotiations over health benefits are to be conducted separately in talks with the Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group for the city’s unions, and since Ms. Weingarten is the committee chairwoman, her good will is essential if headway is to be made on insurance issues.þþMs. Weingarten also won something in the timing: The contract’s expiration at the height of the next mayoral campaign will likely give her extra leverage to wrest promises from candidates for the post. þþAt the news conference, Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Bloomberg said they would deal with health care and pension issues separately, and instead focused on how unusual it was to have reached an early contract.þþ“We have achieved something unprecedented,” Ms. Weingarten said. “We have achieved a tentative agreement 11 months in advance. We will have stability and continuity for the rest of the mayoral term.” The last teachers’ pact was reached last year, two years and four months after the prior contract expired. Mr. Bloomberg’s first contract with the teachers in June 2001 was also late — 19 months after the previous contract’s expiration.þþThe smoothness of the talks owed something to the city’s rosier fiscal prospects, with a large budget surplus on the horizon.þþThe early agreement with the teachers also had few of the policy changes that Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein boasted about in the last deal, underscoring the way in which his focus has shifted from the teachers to the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union for principals and other administrators. þþThe administration has been locked in a feud with the principals’ union over certain work rules and seniority rights. Last month, the union president, Jill S. Levy, said that she would step down when her term ends in January, raising hopes that the logjam would be broken. But there has been no progress, and anger has risen among principals, with many complaining that teachers, with a little extra work, can now earn more than principals and still take the entire summer off. The news of yet another teacher pact was certain to anger them further. þþThe new teachers’ contract includes a minor change to a remediation program for teachers who receive an unsatisfactory rating, and it allows the city to offer a voluntary buyout to any teacher who does not have a regular school assignment.þþBut this time around there were no demands for such concessions and there were no explosive disagreements, no talk of a strike or political threats like the union’s intimation last year that it would endorse Fernando Ferrer rather than the mayor. In the end, the union stayed neutral.þþThe contract needs the approval of the Panel for Educational Policy, as well as the union members. þþ
Source: NY Times
