Past issues
Feeds
The Paper in print
Twitter
Facebook
Contact us
Email updates Twitter Facebook RSS Feeds
A 13th-hour deal between high-rise building employees and owners had doormen and porters at work as normal this morning.
The strike deadline to “doormegedon” came and went early this morning, but union officials representing borough doormen, porters and maintenance workers hashed out a deal with landlords that apparently preserved everything they had and then some.
In an email sent out at 1:04 am, Matt Nerzig, a spokesman for the 32BJ Services Employees International said a new contract was drafted shortly after midnight with a “nearly 10 percent raise over the next four years.”
Members will also retain their cherished employer funded healthcare and not have to give up vacation days, sick days or other benefits, he said.
Since mid-March, union leaders have been feuding with building owners who claimed they could no longer afford employee amenities such as overtime, health care, pensions and sick pay.
Recent dips in residential property values and increased taxes have hit city landlords pretty hard, according to the Realty Advisory Board, which negotiated on behalf of the building owners.
On March 31, Brooklyn union members voted to strike at midnight on April 21 when the current contract, where doormen and maintenance staff receive upwards of $60,000 a year in salary and benefits, expired.
If a new contract had not been drafted, 2,000 union members in 255 apartment buildings in Brooklyn would have stopped what they were doing this morning and begin picketing outside their respected buildings.
Building residents were expected to picket right alongside them, some surmised.
“The tenants need us,” Renee Rodriguez, a maintenance man for the apartment towers on 65th Street between Third and Fourth avenues in Bay Ridge explained when the strike vote was called. “When I talk to them, they can’t believe that something like this is happening to us.”
There was no word from the Realty Advisory Board as the door closed on our cheerful online deadline.
©2010 Community Newspaper Group
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
Print this story
Digg this
Del.icio.us