New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association announced a tentative contract agreement.
The net cost is roughly $336 million, said de Blasio, after deducting about $194 million out of the health savings and stabilization fund from the $530 million gross cost.
The executive board of the city's largest police union approved the deal, upon which full membership will vote. The agreement, retroactive to August 2012, will last until July. It marks a healing in the sometimes prickly relationship between the mayor and the police force, just as he is kicking his re-election campaign into gear.
"It doesn't matter how far apart the parties start; it matters where they end up," de Blasio said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference in the City Hall Blue Room, which included union president Patrick Lynch.
With this settlement, which covers nearly 24,000 NYPD employees, the city has secured deals with each of its uniformed unions through the 2010-2017 round of bargaining.
This is only the second voluntary settlement the city and the PBA have reached since 1994. The association had gone five years without a contract.
The agreement provides retroactive increases of 1% to 3% from 2012 to 2016. Wages will increase 11% over seven years, including a two-year arbitration decision of 2015. This slightly exceeds the 10% other unions have received. In addition, officers will receive a "neighborhood policing differential" beginning March 15, which amounts to 2.25% of an officer's base salary. A reduction in starting salaries to $42,500 will offset the cost, said de Blasio.
"In the grand scheme the terms of the deal aren't too outrageous, even including the sneaky thing they did to jump up pay for 'neighborhood policing,' which is just doing their job," said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. "That breaks away from the negotiating pattern and I'd be curious what the other unions think.
"The part that is worrisome is three-quarters' salary for disability, which can be expensive. They haven't broken out the costs," said Gelinas.
Robert Linn, the city's Office of Labor Relations Commissioner, called the settlement "fiscally responsible for the city and fair for officers."
The PBA has agreed to drop its body camera litigation against the city and the NYPD can expand the use of body cameras to the entire workforce. All patrol officers will be outfitted with cameras by the end of 2019.
Additionally, the PBA has agreed to withdraw and refrain from pursuing litigation related to the administration of naloxone – a lifesaving drug used by first responders as an emergency overdose treatment – and have agreed that such duties are a term and condition of employment.
