The Law Enforcement Employees Benevolent Association reached contract terms Jan. 22 with the de Blasio administration that will give Highway and Sewers Inspectors at three different levels raises consistent with the citywide pattern for civilian employees, upgrade salary schedules and set the stage for a training program for apprentice inspectors and paid family leave for all employees.
The pact, which would be retroactive to June 18, 2018 and run through Sept. 8, 2022, at 50 months and 22 days is more than six months longer than the pattern-setting agreements reached with District Council 37 and the United Federation of Teachers in 2018. The stretching of its duration offset the cost of new pay scales for the roughly 250 employees covered, with increases on top of the basic wage hikes that increased the deal’s value to employees by 1.67 percent.
Consistent with other civilian employees in this bargaining round, union members were to receive raises of 2 percent, 2.25 percent and 3 percent, payable June 18, 2018, Nov. 18, 2019 and July 18, 2020, respectively. That final percentage raise, however, would be scrapped in favor of new pay plans: one for Highway and Sewer Inspectors, the others for the higher titles of Associate Inspector (Highways and Sewers) Levels 1 and 2.
Until now, there were just entry and basic job-rate salaries paid for each job; under the agreement, there will be intermediate rungs on a six-step scale for Highway and Sewers Inspectors and a five-step one for those in the Associate Inspector (Highways/Sewers) Levels 1 and 2 titles.
For the entry-level title, which previously had a starting rate of $52,730 and jumped to $60,639, the starting pay would go to $55,000 and reach $72,000 at the final step. For those in the Associate titles, where the range had been $58,375 to start, rising to $67,131 for Associate Inspector (Highways and Sewers) Level 1, the scale will start at $73,000 and rise by $1,000 a year to $77,000, while Level II, which had gone from $64,973 to $74,719, will start at $80,266 and progress to $84,460.
Effective July 1 of this year, the roughly 100 employees in the title of Apprentice Inspector (Highway and Sewers) with at least three years of service in the title shall be entitled to a two-step process for grieving disciplinary actions.
The two sides, assuming the deal was ratified, would form a labor-management committee to discuss the role of seniority for both shift assignments and regular days off, and a training program for current and future Apprentice Inspectors. They also agreed to collaborate to “opt in” to the state’s Paid Family Leave program “as soon as practicable” following the contract’s approval by members.
LEEBA President Kenneth Wynder Jr. said in a statement that the agreement “constitutes a building block for the future. This agreement properly recognizes the hard-working Inspectors that LEEBA represents. We have made a giant step in the right direction by the city acknowledging the need for an apprenticeship program for DOT Highway and Sewer Inspectors.”
Labor Commissioner Renee Campion, while noting that the tentative deal’s cost was in line with the civilian-union pattern, said of the pay-scale improvements made possible by the extension of the contract and a combined six-month delay in the payment of the final two percentage raises, “This is a demonstration of a creative problem-solving approach to collective bargaining.”