The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association took steps on Tuesday to push an agreement with the city on pay negotiations, the NYPD union said.
In filing a Declaration of Impasse with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, the PBA said they hope to reboot the deadlocked contract negotiations. NYPD officers have been without a contract since 2012, according to the union.
“By declaring these negotiations at an impasse, we are taking the next step to ensure that New York City police officers — who protect the biggest city in the country every day — receive a rate of pay equal to other police officers locally and across the country,” PBA President Patrick Lynch said in a statement.
“This is just another example of Mayor de Blasio and his administration not appropriately supporting our police officers, who, as a result, would leave the NYPD if they could. That’s bad for the city’s future.”
According to the PBA, city cops make less than those in many other large cities, including Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Lynch said the PBA is hoping for a third-party mediator who can “restore a sense of fairness to a process that has been taken over by the Mayor’s insistence on playing politics, and provide our members with a contract that will allow them to provide for themselves and their families.”
The mayor’s office pointed out that the PBA declined their last offer of an 11% raise over seven years, which officers in other unions — including those cops with a higher rank – accepted.
“Since taking office, we have tried again and again to work with the PBA to provide their members with a fair long-term deal with significant raises and benefits — a deal like the ones every other police and uniformed union accepted,” a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said in an email. “The PBA has been unwilling to negotiate, instead choosing to wage a political war and go to arbitration — again.”
If the Public Employment Relations Board finds that an impasse exists, both the city and the PBA will enter into nonbinding mediation, according to the PBA. If an agreement can’t be reached, either side can petition the board for a three-member arbitration panel, whose decision would be final and binding.
