New York City reached a tentative contract agreement with Teamsters Local 237, which represents school safety agents and special officers, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The agreement includes a proposed resolution of a discrimination lawsuit, de Blasio said in an announcement.
It ensures that the roughly 5,000 school safety agents - mostly female and many of whom have been making $7,000 less per year than similarly employed special officers -- will achieve equal pay by the end of the contract.
The union had been without a contract since 2010.
After health care savings, which he did not specify, the net cost of the tentative Local 237 settlement will be $67.9 million, de Blasio said late Aug. 26 outside the Cobble Hill School of American Studies in Brooklyn.
Union members must ratify the agreement and the courts must sign off on the settlement.
School safety agents filed a class action in 2013 accusing the city of paying them less than the special officers who perform similar work at homeless shelters and hospitals. The suit claimed the city violated the federal Equal Pay Act.
