New York City reached tentative seven-year labor agreements with the Uniformed Superior Officers Coalition, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday night, with a net cost of $414 million to the city's fiscal 2015-2018 financial plan.
That cost is $145 million above financial plan projections, de Blasio's office said in a statement.
The coalition is comprised of eight unions representing about 12,000 high-ranking police, fire, sanitation and correction officials. They would receive an 11% wage increase over the seven years. Each union must ratify the agreements.
Speaking at City Hall, de Blasio said his administration has now reached agreements with 71% percent of the city workforce that had been working under expired contracts. De Blasio took office in January.
De Blasio said the deal adds a 1% raise in the first year, which breaks the pattern set by the city's deal it struck in May with the United Federation of Teachers. The contracts would start retroactively on dates ranging from March 2011 to July 2012. He said projected health-care savings and funds from the labor reserve and stabilization fund trimmed $145.4 million from the gross cost of $559.1 million.
According to Maria Doulis, the director of city studies for the Citizens Budget Commission watchdog organization, the new deal reduces some of the city's risk in arbitration proceedings with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the largest uniformed union.
"Arbitrators take the established pattern of wage increases into consideration, and this agreement makes it more challenging for the PBA to argue the salary increases that are acceptable to the rest of the uniformed force are insufficient for its members," said Doulis.
In total, said the mayor, the city and the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group representing 99 unions covering more than 300,000 city employees, have agreed to secure $3.4 billion in health care savings through fiscal 2018, and $1.3 billion in savings annually thereafter. These savings, said de Blasio, are guaranteed and enforceable by arbitration.
Moody's Investors Service rates the city's general obligation bonds Aa2. Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's rate them AA.
