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Tag: Mayor Bill de Blasio

  • NYC Teacher Contract A “Landmark” Agreement

    NYC Teacher Contract A “Landmark” Agreement

    Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a “landmark” labor deal on Thursday with New York City’s largest teachers’ union, the New York Times is reporting. The deal will set the framework for other outstanding contracts with the municipal workforce, officials said.

    The teachers’ union known as the United Federation of Teachers has been without a contract for four and a half years during former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure in office and must ratify the agreement.

    The deal grants $3.4 billion in back pay to the union, in exchange for a substantial reduction in health care costs and an easing of classroom work rules. Teachers will also receive raises totaling up to 10 percent over seven years.

    Mayor Bill de Blasio hailed the deal as a victory for educators and tax payers, though it is still unclear if the city will have savings from the reduction in health care costs. Officials said that if other teachers’ unions agree to the same deal with a reduction in health care costs, the city will save $3.4 billion, off-setting the back pay given to the union.

    In addition, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the agreement would increase teacher retention, while staying within the city’s budget. It’s a stark contrast in negotiating tactics when compared to his predecessor Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who promoted pay freezes and other stringent tactics.

    The substantial reduction in health care costs without raising premiums comes from an idiosyncratic approach, according to city officials, such as increased use of prescriptions by mail, which saves money in the long-run. The hope is that the other 151 municipal bargaining units that have open contracts with the city will adopt a similar approach.

    This is Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first year in office, and city officials hope that this agreement with the United Federation of Teachers will set the tone for other agreements during his tenure in office.

    The agreement is expected to stretch over nine years, which is substantially longer than the most recent municipal contracts in New York, and a way city officials hope to spread the impact of the wage increases over many years’ worth of budgets.

    But it’s still unclear if the savings generated by a substantial reduction in health care costs will materialize.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • New York Teachers’ Union Close to 9-Year Deal

    Since 2009, New York teachers, represented by the United Federation of Teachers, have been working without a contract, disputing their pay with the city and previous Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for 5 years. That dispute is now coming to a close as both teachers and current Mayor Bill de Blasio are on the verge of announcing a deal.

    Mayor de Blasio postponed a major announcement about his affordable-housing plan to work on the agreement. Officials, who wished to remain anonymous because it has not been finalized, said that the deal, in which both sides would announce a 9-year contract, could be disclosed at City Hall on Thursday.

    “We’re just finalizing the language,” said a teachers’ union official. “It could be very soon.”

    The United Federation of Teachers was seeking $3.4 billion in back pay, claiming that they should have received the same raises that most other city unions had received. These retroactive raises would now be given (though over many years), according to an official.

    The deal would also address other major educational issues such as evaluating teacher’s performance by student test results, the length of the school day, and the pool of approximately 1,000 teachers who are still being paid although their jobs have been eliminated due to school closings or other reasons.

    The 9-year contract would date from November 1, 2009, when the union’s contract expired, and extend for another four and a half years (until after the next mayoral election in 2017).

    But a concern from the very beginning has been that the other 151 municipal unions, also without contracts, will want to begin negotiating deals as well. Last week subway and bus workers reached a deal with the city for a raise of 11 percent over 6 years.

    “These discussions are just one part of the process,” said an anonymous senior administration official. “They’re an important part of a much larger conversation that still has a long way to go. We’re looking at a comprehensive approach to labor negotiations.”

    Current salaries for New York public school teachers range from $45,000 to $100,000.


    Image via YouTube

  • Liam Neeson to Tour N.Y. Carriage Horse Stables

    Liam Neeson will visit the stables of New York carriage horses on Sunday, along with several city council members. Neeson is against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to do away with the horses that are frequently seen towing passengers enjoying leisurely rides through Central Park.

    De Blasio said throughout his entire mayoral campaign that he would ban the carriages if he was elected. He wholeheartedly believes that the practice of carriage rides is outdated and cruel to the animals. The mayor also plans to tour the Clinton Park horse stables at some point in the near future, but he says his mind is made up no matter what.

    “I respect Liam Neeson a lot. I’m a big fan of his work. But the fact is I’ve put forward a plan and a vision, and the people ratified it in a election, and that’s what mattered most,” de Blasio said during an interview on Saturday. “What we do want to do, and we’ve said this repeatedly, is work with the carriage operators to find a good path for them individually going forward. Other job opportunities for them. They would get first dibs on those job opportunities. We have to put together all the pieces.”

    It seems only about a dozen of the 51 New York City Council members agreed to tour the stables on Sunday with Liam Neeson. While the Taken actor’s idea of saving the carriage horses and the iconic New York City tradition is one many people would no doubt love to see come to fruition, it seems the mayor has made up his mind. And without the backing of way more than a dozen or so city council members it doesn’t sound like there’s a prayer of changing his plan. de Blasio even wants to replace the horses with electric cars.

    A Sioux nation chief spoke out against Mayor de Blasio’s plan back in November, saying he believes the horses belong beside the people they have long served.

    Do you think Mayor Bill de Blasio is right in wanting the horse drawn carriages in New York banned? Or do you think Liam Neeson and the few who likely back up his feelings on the matter deserve more of a forum before the decision becomes set in stone and a New York tradition is replaced with electric cars?

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Pussy Riot & the NYC Mayor: The New SuperGroup?

    Pussy Riot & the NYC mayor. Sounds like the perfect name for an indie band, don’t you think? Although it’s probably safe to say that there probably won’t be any new songs coming from the two entities, Associated Press tells us that Mayor de Blasio met the Russian punk rock protest band at City Hall yesterday during their New York city visit.

    Pussy Riot is still not loving their president, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and have been spreading that sentiment throughout the streets of NY. Although they have been publicly denounced by six members of the Pussy Riot collective for “being so carried away with the problems in Russian prisons, that they completely forgot about the aspirations and ideals of (their) group,” they’ve been greeted with welcome arms, so far appearing on The Colbert Report and the Amnesty International Concert with Madonna.The two recently released Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of the twelve-odd members of Pussy Riot used a translator to speak to the supportive Brooklynites to thank supporters, compliment Amnesty International efforts and reassure us all that one day, “Russia will be free!”

    NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and wife Chirlane McCray met with Pussy Riot to talk politics, and the mayor commended the ladies for “their bravery and courage”– a bold statement from the politician– Madonna has already reported to have received death threats for supporting the activist group.

    While the Olympics go on in Russia, Pussy Riot has stayed noticeably absent from the country. They denounced their early release from prison as a “publicity stunt” performed just in time for the Sochi Olympics immediately after setting foot on free ground, and are currently telling Olympic watchers worldwide to “Don’t Believe The Hype.” The only appearance from Pussy Riot so far can possibly be attributed to Russian snowboarder Alexey Sobolev’s snowboard portraying a knife-wielding woman wearing the Pussy Riot signature ski mask.

    Image via Twitter

  • Joe Biden Calls LaGuardia A Third World Airport

    Vice President Joe Biden has been known to speak his mind on occasion, and by now most people know that biting his tongue isn’t one of his best skills, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when he spoke poorly of LaGuardia Airport, in New York, but it might be surprising to hear that he compared it to an airport in a third world country.

    “If I blindfolded someone and took them at 2 o’clock in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said ‘where do you think you are?’ They would say ‘this must be America. This is a modern airport,’” said Biden. “If I took them blindfolded and took them to LaGuardia airport in New York, he would be like ‘I must be in some third world country.’ I’m not joking.”

    Some may think that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio would be in scramble mode after Biden made his comments, and quickly assemble a team to make all the necessary improvements, but that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, he seemed annoyed at what Biden said and struck back.

    “LaGuardia obviously needs an upgrade,” he said in a press conference. “But that being said the airport manages an extraordinary amount of traffic and the people work there make it work under very difficult circumstances. So as a proud New Yorker, I didn’t like that comment, and I think it was not the right way to talk about it.”

    The people who run LaGuardia, which are the folks at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said they don’t totally disagree with Biden’s assessment, which is why they’re making a lot of improvements in the years to come.

    “Significant investment in transportation infrastructure is the key to growing our economy and creating jobs,” they said. “Which is why the Port Authority this week proposed a 10-year $27 billion capital plan that creates more than 126,000 jobs and invests $8 billion in modernizing the region’s airports.”

    Image Wikimedia Commons