By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Contract negotiations between New York City and NYPD sergeants — many of whom are now getting paid less than some police officers they oversee — have completely broken down, forcing the union to declare an impasse with city negotiators and ask for the assistance of an outside mediator, the Daily News has learned.
Vincent Vallelong, the president of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association has filed a “Declaration of Impasse” with the city’s Office of Labor Relations after being repeatedly snubbed by the city over requests for salary raises.
By filing the declaration, the union is requesting the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to assign an outside mediator to handle future negotiations.
The impasse comes as the Adams administration repeatedly boasts that it has successfully negotiated contracts “with unions representing nearly 97% of the city’s workforce.”
Over the last 20 months, the city has negotiated contracts with the Police Benevolent Association, United Federation of Teachers, United Probation Officers Associations and Uniformed Sanitation Workers’ Union, to name a few.
The city’s sergeants haven’t had a contract in two years because of the wage disparity involving 1,275 of them after the city recently increased the salaries of rank-and-file police officers.
The 1,275 sergeants are now making less than many of the officers they supervise, Vallelong said.
“The city is not even taking our calls [on this issue],” Vallelong told the Daily News. “I have now twice sent emails to Mayor Adams to sit down with us and work this out and there’s been no communication whatsoever.
“There’s no other avenue to go,” Vallelong said about the request for a mediator.
It’s the first time the union has requested outside help to handle negotiations with the city, he said.
“It is time for an outside entity to step in and do the job OLR is incapable of doing themselves,” Vallelong said in a message to his members this week. “We have rung the bell over and over. It is time for adults to answer the door and do the job they were hired to do. If not, we will need a New York State appointed mediator to step in so this egregious situation can be corrected.”
Vallelong hopes that the mediator will “talk some sense” into the city.
“They’re not thinking straight,” Vallelong said about the Office of Labor Relations.
An email to the city for comment about the failed contract negotiations was not immediately returned.
Under the expired contract, the base pay for sergeants, who supervise several cops at a time while responding to 911 calls, ranges from $98,000 a year at the beginning to about $118,000 within five years. After the newest contract with the PBA, experienced police officers can earn about $115,000, SBA members said.
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The city put itself in a bind by increasing rank-and-file police officer wages without providing comparable increases to supervisory ranks, Vallelong said.
“Now you have new sergeants making less than top-pay police officers,” the union president said. “The OLR didn’t realize your salary can’t be less than what it was before you get promoted. There’s no other rank on the job this has happened to.”
The city is spending millions to level the playing field and have begun promoting sergeants to the highest pay level, Vallelong said. During contract negotiations, the SBA provided several possible solutions to even the scales, including a more equitable pay scale program, but the city didn’t want to hear any of them, Vallelong said.
Police officers become sergeants after studying and taking a civil service exam, so a great deal of work and effort goes into becoming a sergeant — something the rank and file may not want to do if they know they can get the same salary as a cop if they work long enough, Vallelong said.
“Every chief on the job goes through my rank,” he said about the sergeant position. “What message are you sending when you begin telling people that they can take this job, but at a lower pay than your current one?”
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