The New Year looks to be busy with contract negotiations, exam training, campaigns and grievance battles to be won.

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF ANALYST EXAM TRAINING. As you may be aware, the Administrative Staff Analyst exam was postponed from October 2, 2019 to February 10, 2020.

Some Associate Staff Analysts no longer need to take the promotional Administrative Staff Analyst exam as they were appointed Admin SA from the existing list and some in other titles were made Admin SA's through 6.1.9 transfers. Also, some candidates for Associate Staff Analyst were appointed over the past few months and became eligible to take the promotional Admin SA as a result of "Late Filing."

For those of you taking the Admin SA exam in February who did not take OSA's exam training last summer or who would like to repeat all or part of the training, OSA is holding a "refresher" course in late January. Holiday schedules and vacations from November through early January required holding the training in a "compressed" form over a two and a half week period.

Training classes will start Tuesday, January 21, and be held every weeknight through Tuesday, February 4, in the union office, with the exception of Thursday, January 30 (the general membership meeting). The ten classes will cover ten topics, one per night.

You may wish to take all ten classes or just a few. Eight of the classes are basic Analyst Series training subjects, such as math, statistics and grammar. The other two - on "Interpersonal Skills and Conflict Management" and "In-Basket Orientation" - are specifically for the Admin SA exam.

Classes will begin at 5:30 pm for sign-in and last until 9 pm. No weekend classes will be offered. The registration form can be downloaded here and indicates which topic(s) will be covered on which days. Please circle ONLY the classes you wish to attend or check the box on the form if you plan to attend them all. Training is free to current OSA and OSART members. Please call George at 212-686-1229 to determine if you have to pay again.

Non-represented individuals will have to bring the registration form and a money order for $97.50 to the OSA office prior to the first training session. Those represented by OSA may fax the form to 212-686-1073 or 212-686-1231. Your registration form is your entry to the training. Please keep a copy. You will be registered unless you hear from us.

Note: The "refresher" course repeats all of the information given in the regular training course last summer. If you took that course, you may not need to hear the information again.

NEGOTIATIONS. Our union had hoped for a quick negotiation and settlement for this contract period, but we were disappointed. Last year, by the early spring, we believed we had pretty much reached a settlement and we entered technical meetings to complete the details. By early June, we offered to finish the remaining few details after contract acceptance, but the City was not responsive. For whatever reasons, they did not schedule any further sessions until the fall and then only one meeting in November, followed by a technical meeting on December 30th.

There is an old phrase that states "it takes two to tango," and this applies here. Members often call asking why the union is holding up negotiations. We are not. Sometimes, we do hold up negotiations for good reason, as we did in 2001, 2007 and 2014. Each time we had good reason and, each time, we achieved our goal.

This time, however, the City is moving slowly. In order to know how to respond, it is helpful to know a bit about the history of New York City collective bargaining.

HISTORY. Collective bargaining came late to public service workers. The first major and powerful force to become unionized in New York City started off as private sector employees. The Transport Workers Union had successfully organized the IRT and BMT subways by the 1930's and they added workers of the newly built IND subway once it was up and running.

At the time, the IRT and BMT were privately owned but the IND was a publicly owned line. Thus, the IND workers were government employees who were joining a militant union already known for its ability to go on strike.

There were no major subway strikes called by the Transport Workers Union during the 1940's and 50's, but there were strike threats as each contract came up for renewal. It became an amusing ritual for their president, Mike Quill, to thunder and roar about stopping all the buses and subways on January 1st - unless a new contract was signed. Then, after weeks of radio, TV and newspaper coverage of the impending work stoppage, the Mayor would intervene and a deal would go through early in the morning on New Year's Day.

It was a pleasant ritual. The Transport Workers would delight in Quill's warnings about how vital their work was to all New Yorkers, rich and poor. The New York City media enjoyed the thrilling possibilities of potential conflict, even if nothing ever happened, contract after contract. The Mayor was equally delighted because he could play hero at the last minute and avoid total disaster.

Of course, this all broke down once a sufficiently stupid mayor arrived on the scene. The 1966 transit strike against John Lindsay, however, was not the first strike by NYC government employees. That first strike involved five tug boat captains. They were all fired under the terms of the Condon-Wadlin Act that prohibited government employees from striking.

However, in January of 1965, the Social Service Employees Union, joined by Local 371 of DC 37, went out on a month-long strike over a proposed contract. Legally, all strikers were to be fired and their union leaders actually were incarcerated. Threats (by telegram to each employee's home) did not work and replacing ten thousand experienced workers was not really possible or cost effective.

The City settled.

Even so, the raises did not arrive until 1966.

This began a pattern of contract settlements that always seemed to result in retroactive pay checks arriving well into the new contract period, sometimes sooner, sometimes later.

The 1965 and subsequent strikes convinced the City and State that a better law than the one-sided Condon-Wadlin Act was needed. First came the NY City Office of Collective Bargaining Law and, soon after, the NY State "Taylor Law" that established the Public Employment Relations Board.

The new laws more or less permitted public sector strikes if management provoked them, but penalized the unions if they started the fight. The new law was tested by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority which sought to provoke a strike by cutting benefits when the prior contract period ran out. The TBTA did that to force the unions to accept a bad deal, but the unions chose not to strike but instead appealed to PERB in 1982.

PERB sided with the unions and issued the Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law. Henceforth, all contract terms stayed in effect until a new contract was agreed upon by labor and management.

As far back as the 1960's, public employees were annoyed by the tendency of the City to string out contract negotiations until long after the old contract ran out.

At one point when Abraham Beame was running for Mayor, union activists accused the City of deliberately slowing negotiations in order to earn the interest on monies due to the employees. Candidate Beame, an accountant, corrected the accuser. "No," he explained, "The City delays contracts because we do not know in advance and with certainty, how much tax money we will be receiving. We have estimates, but before signing a legal contract to pay more, we like to know we will have the money to pay the agreed amount."

The answer, if not pleasing to the unions, appeared to be exactly correct five years later when the 1975 Fiscal Crisis hit with no warning. A 2% raise due to the unions was suspended until paying it would no longer push the City into bankruptcy.

So, from 1965 until today, a pattern of slow negotiations and retroactive payments has been the rule for most contract periods.

During the past twenty years, the current practice was challenged once. Then-Mayor Bloomberg, in his last term, lobbied to repeal the Triborough Doctrine.

His efforts were unsuccessful.

AT PRESENT. The current custom is for negotiations to take place with the largest unions first to set a pattern. Then, smaller unions are generally offered the same basic financial pattern, but usually with a small amount put aside to create provisions for items preferred by the different local unions, such as longevity or assignment differential.

If a negotiation seems to be stalled for a long time, the unions have two options. The first is to seek the help of the Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB) to compel the City to cease delay. Our union has gone to OCB in a few cases, but that process is itself quite slow. Thus, it is not a great option.

The second option is to create pressure on the City leaders through demonstrations and/or threats. This option was recently exercised by the TWU. Having ten thousand TWU members demonstrate outside of the bosses' offices is most impressive. The actual number attending the rally may have been less than the number claimed, but the street was filled as far as the TV cameras could see. The effort paid off and settlement was achieved.

OSA is not ready to ask our members to start demonstrating yet for two reasons. First, we do expect that the City will settle with us this year and that we will receive every penny due us under the pattern (including retroactive monies). Second, a small demonstration would be self-defeating.

At the annual Labor Day Parade, OSA's attendance is generally around one hundred souls marching, on a Saturday, for about one mile. Should the City fail to complete negotiations with us by the summer, we will ask all of our members to show up at the parade. If ten percent of us do, the union will be ready to make our anger at the contract delay visible and hard to ignore.

VICTORIES. Our union does have its struggles, but we also have had our victories as well. Since this mailing reports on contract difficulties and a regrettable addition to the presidential race, we should balance it with a few victories.

In terms of collective bargaining, we have won many a fight over the decades, but we will list here the fights that delayed our main union contract:

2001 - OSA delayed approval of the contract from May of that year until the start of October. Our concern was that the City would issue a managerial pay order hurting our newly recognized Administrative Staff Analysts and Supervising Systems Analysts. The initial pay order did exactly that, but was revised two days later to include our new members for those retroactive raises. We won that one.

2007 - OSA had not gotten a 1% productivity award given to DC 37 for 2003. We were negotiating for that 1% into the next two contracts with no success. Twenty other non-DC 37 unions gave up, accepted less or gave the City givebacks to get the 1% . In February of 2007, we were ready to settle and the City insisted if we wanted that 7% two-year raise, we must give up the 1%. We refused and appealed to OCB.

Eight months later, as the hearings finally started, the City offered to double our 1% longevity increase if we would drop the case. We did get the 1% and were the only non-DC 37 union to get the full raise without givebacks.

2014 - OSA chose to seek extra from the new administration. We asked for furloughs for those in need, promotional exams for our "non-competitive" status members, voluntary alternate work schedules for as many members as practical and longevity awards for our Administrative Staff Analysts Levels II and III.

The City resisted but, after impasse proceedings, we won about half of all we had asked. We got exactly half of the demanded longevity, a committee to appeal to in case of a furlough request denial, the start of a process now under way to add even more of us to the eligible list for alternate work schedules and our first "non-competitive" members took promotional exams for advancement this past summer.

Wrapping up this topic is one more quite recent victory. During the 2008-2010 contract period, our uniformed forces unit was in negotiations when Bloomberg shut down all negotiations. Most of us got raises in 2008-2010, but not our School Safety members and not our Traffic Enforcement members.

Once DeBlasio was in office, we moved as quickly as we could, but negotiations were tough and quite extended. We actually turned down the City's final offer at one point and then, five months later, accepted a much improved offer.

However, a contract period that starts in 2008 and goes forward all the way to 2017 means many members covered will get promoted or demoted or just plain retire.

As far as we are concerned, those members are all still our responsibility and should benefit from any contract we finally sign. As it turned out, the City did not agree.

In such a case, we hand the matter over to our Grievance Department. Assistant General Counsel Nora Sullivan reports as follows:

"OSA has won an arbitration award for seven former members of the School Safety and Traffic Enforcement Unit related to retroactive back pay for work they performed before the 2008-2017 contract had settled. The City took the position that the members were not entitled to retroactive pay, because by the time the retro pay was being implemented (years after it had been earned), the members were no longer in the OSA bargaining unit.

"OSA took the position that, as the payments were for work performed while the members were still in the unit, they were entitled to it. The arbitrator agreed with OSA. This decision was soon followed by a settlement for another nine former members, with a similar grievance. Altogether, the arbitration award and settlement gives our brothers and sisters $382,277 in back pay. Individual awards range from $9,405 to $36,925 per person, depending on the length of time in the unit, base salary, overtime, and number of missed installments. The average individual payout totals $24,261."

The importance of OSA's Grievance and Disciplinary unit is not obvious to members who have had no need for such help. It is like insurance: You don't expect to need it until one day you do. On that day, it is good that we have good people on our side.

BUT WAIT, THERE IS STILL MORE. If our victory for the uniforms in 2019 was our most recent, a far earlier one was brought to mind at the holiday party in December. At the party, the daughter of an OSA retiree came over to thank the OSA leadership for saving her mother's job. She remembered the day it happened, when she was only 4 years old. With the help of her memory, we were able to piece together the story.

In 1987, OSA, after 13 years of trying, was still not a union. However, we had begun to act like one. We had many voluntary members in all City agencies. We were everything but recognized and some agencies had even begun to informally accept grievances from us and resolve them. Still, we were legally unofficial.

The mother was hired at a Staff Analyst hiring pool, along with two other candidates. All three were recruited to work in an HRA employment section. Their future boss was remarkably positive and enthusiastic.

Six months later, the three Analysts reached out to OSA because all were being fired while still on probation. As the daughter reported, "Mom went to see you and she said you became very angry at what was happening."

Her report brought it all back. A visit to the 34th Street work location provided an answer. More experienced Analysts reported that the boss was a dodo and was blaming those he had hired for his own failings. Examples of stupid behavior were attested to by senior staff.

Two hours later, at 109 East 16th Street, the headquarters for the 34th Street location, we were given access to a higher level boss.

The case was made that it was unlikely that three out of three Analysts hired on the same day at the same pool could all turn out to be poor employees. Our soon-to-be member had ten years of prior civil service experience, all satisfactory to her bosses; another of the Analysts had eight years of the same. The third Analyst was from the outside and, so, had no record.

Details from the original hiring pool were recounted, especially the unreasonably positive spin the hiring boss had put on what experienced civil servants knew to be a tough and challenging job. This was compared with the entirely unreasonably negative opinions now expressed by that same boss about the staff he had personally selected.

Our request was that the Analysts be given a one month extension of probation, and be brought down to 16th Street. If the big boss saw them in action and found fault, no more would be said.

The Analysts were kept on and all three had long careers with HRA. The member who is the subject of our story got promoted and, eventually, retired in December 2004

Between 1987 and now, OSA has become a recognized union and we can do more for our members than we could when we were not yet legal. Still, the reminder of a victory 37 years earlier, was as good a present as anyone could receive for Christmas or Hanukkah.

PRESIDENT MIKE? The press has reported that Mike Bloomberg is spending (or will spend) $300,000,000 to win the Democratic nomination for President. Judging by his TV ads, this could be so.

Is OSA supporting Mike in his effort to save us from Donald Trump?

No.

Mike Bloomberg is a bad man. At least that is the impression he gave us for twelve years. For example, soon after taking office, he demanded that we give him $600,000,000 in givebacks, recurring. (This worked out to about a $2,000 decrease in salary, on average, per City worker.) He asked nicely, at a tea he hosted at Gracie Mansion. If we said no, he would be forced to lay off 20,000 of us. We did not say no, but we did not say yes either.

Instead, we negotiated with him.

To put pressure on us, he laid off 3,000 of the City workforce. Among others, he laid off 300 young Sanitation workers. Harry Nespoli, president of that union, went to every Community Planning Board in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. As each meeting, he expressed regret that garbage pick-ups had gone from twice a week to only once due to the layoffs. He also shared that, fortunately, Bloomberg's neighbors were not affected. Pick-ups south of 96th Street in Manhattan continued to occur three times a week.

After Mayor Bloomberg had received enough angry letters from the outer boroughs, the 300 layoffs were rescinded.

Eventually, the mayor gave up demanding we give him money and we gave him a face-saving settlement. We gave him $100,000,000 (for example, a GHI doctor visit's cost went from $10 to $15) and he gave us $100,000,000 (for example, increasing our welfare funds) in return. He generally gave us as little as possible in our contracts and he did far worse to weaker unions than he was able to do to us.

He sneered at the City Council members seeking to modify term limits and then, later, got himself an exemption so he could get four more years for himself.

He became enraged when the City Council passed a bill requiring a $10 an hour wage for any company benefiting from a grant of over one million dollars of NYC taxpayers funds. So, it was okay for you and I to pay taxes so he could give his friends a million or more to do business in New York City, but how dare anyone raise the minimum wage.

He worked happily with organized crime in supporting the corrupt school bus workers union and publicly fantasized how wonderful it would be if all the Russian plutocrats (kleptocrats?) chose to make New York City their home.

He saved the best for last.

After he secured his third term, he gave DC 37 and OSA and many other unions a 4% and 4% raise for the 2008-2010 contract, and then he ran out of money. Or, to put it more accurately, he ran out of money for City workers.

Thereafter, all negotiations were announced as having to be financed through givebacks (we give him a quarter, he returns a nickel). Moreover, there was to be no retroactive pay because "it was ridiculous to pay for work already done." (Never mind the fact that every prior City contract he had ever signed had included retroactive pay.)

Also, he sought to reverse the Triborough Doctrine, so that he could unilaterally lower our salaries and benefits while still outlawing any strikes. When that did not work, he was forced to negotiate with us over his new, proposed health plans. He offered us Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze options, all of which we unanimously rejected because they were worse than what we already had in place. Our most healthy members would have paid the least, but they were already paying nothing. Our less healthy members would have paid a great deal more but, after all, they smoked or drank or were fat. Thus, in his eyes, they should pay more since they were sinners.

He is bragging on TV about all the health coverage he has provided, but he never mentioned what he tried to do to us, our families and our retirees.

Finally, he spent every cent he had saved (by not giving us raises) before the new mayor arrived. He even bragged about the fact that no successor mayor would be able to make up for what he had denied us. On that claim, as on so many others, we proved him wrong.

Mayor Mike was the perfect plutocrat, fighting for Manhattan's Silk Stocking District and Wall Street for his full twelve years.

On his last day in office, he stood on a desk in his "open office" concept main room and received the applause of all the young people he had hired to staff his headquarters. Then, as he was videoed walking down the curving staircase, tears came to his eyes and it was clear that he had at last found someone he cared about.

He had not cared about exploited school bus drivers, nor daycare teachers who were denied years of retroactive pay. He had not cared about innocent young persons of color being humiliated by stop and frisk, nor about the police officers held to quota of how many such incidents they must carry out, with or without justification. He had not cared about those laid off for his own purposes nor about the taxpayers whose money he wasted on an unneeded and fraudulent timekeeping boondoggle.

He had not cared about us when he sought to install his daughter's young girlfriend into a newly created and unneeded position. She would have been the financial guru who would advise us and, in return, get a six figure salary paid by those of us in the City's Deferred Compensation Plan. We did stop that.

He had not cared about a lot of people over the years, but on the last day we learned he did care about someone.

Himself. He was crying for himself.

GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING. Our next general membership meeting will take place on Thursday, January 30th starting, as usual, at 6pm in the union office. A flyer to remind you of the date, time and location can be downloaded at this link. It can be posted as well at your work location. The meeting will be followed by food and then the latest session of our Activists Classroom Training.