Bronx Landlords Threaten to Cancel Union Contract…
Ready to Strike: Building service workers in Riverdale last month. Photo courtesy of 32BJ SEIU
By Steve Wishnia
Seeking concessions from hundreds of New York City building-service workers, the trade group representing Bronx landlords has threatened to terminate its four-year contract with 32BJ SEIU — but it has agreed to delay doing so for 30 days beyond the original deadline of March 31.
The union’s agreement with the Bronx Realty Advisory Board (BRAB), reached last year, covers about 1,400 workers in 437 buildings — superintendents, handypeople, porters, and doorpeople. It also sets a pattern for about 1,300 other workers, according to 32BJ. A clause in the deal allows BRAB to opt out after one year.
BRAB announced in February that it wanted to reopen the contract, but earlier this month, it and 32BJ agreed to the 30-day extension. That, the union says, means workers will get raises scheduled to go into effect on March 15, and pay health-insurance increases that start on April 1, instead of them being suspended until after reopener negotiations.
If BRAB decides to reopen the contract on April 1, and can’t reach a deal with 32BJ by April 30, the agreement will expire at 9 p.m. that night. The union would then be able to go on strike.
“We’re going to be ready,” 32BJ executive vice president Shirley Aldebol told Work-Bites.
BRAB has not told the union what it wants, she says, but seeking concessions is “really a slap in the face to [the workers] and the sacrifices they made during COVID.”
“The most important thing is I’d like to ask the BRAB to honor the contract we signed last year for the wages and the standard benefits,” says Marcos Morillo, a superintendent in a Pelham Bay co-op building since 1987.
Work-Bites was unable to reach the BRAB, as neither of the two office numbers listed on its minimal website worked. But in a message to owners and managing agents posted on the site, its president, William Schur, boasted that the wage increases in its 2019-2023 contract with 32BJ were lower than those at Co-Op City and in Westchester County and the mid-Hudson region.
The wage increases in the 2023 contract, about 3% a year, were slightly less than those in the previous two agreements. Landlords, claiming poverty because of tenants unable to pay rent during the depths of the COVID pandemic, had sought a wage freeze, benefit cuts, and to peg any pay raises to the annual rent increases the city Rent Guidelines Board allows for rent-stabilized apartments, Aldebol says. That board froze rents for one-year lease renewals four times during Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty, but allowed increases of 3.25% to 5% in 2022 and 3% to 6% last year.
The union agreed to the opt-out clause in order to preserve pension benefits and premium-free health care, Aldebol says.
The Bronx workers are the lowest-paid residential-building workers in 32BJ. In 2023, the starting wage was about $18.50 an hour for superintendents and handypersons; $17 for others; and $16.50 for workers in buildings with less than six employees. Many Bronx buildings have only one or two workers, Aldebol says. The 22-story, 120-unit co-op where Morillo works has a staff of three: him, a handyperson, and a porter.
But workers also get additional raises with seniority, and they have solid benefits, with employers’ contributions for health insurance and pensions almost $2,000 a month per worker in 2022. Morillo says having union wages and benefits enabled him to put his two children through college.
In addition to the health risks they faced during COVID, he adds, their workload also increased. There was more garbage because residents were working at home, and they also had to disinfect public areas, hallways, and doors.
32BJ has organized rallies at several Bronx buildings to demand that owners leave the contract as is. They “are seeing an unprecedented amount of activity from the workers,” Aldebol says. “Do they want to drive us into a strike? We won’t go backward.”