The disastrous state of labor relations between the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and City Hall has brought the NYPD to the brink of curtailing the department’s most effective crimefighting program. Commissioner Ray Kelly is warning that Operation Impact may go by the boards because of a growing manpower shortage.
This is a matter of the deepest concern for New York. Operation Impact has worked wonders across the city as Kelly has flooded hundreds of rookie officers into neighborhoods where crime started to spike. Invariably, the beefed-up police presence got things under control.
Now, though, the NYPD is struggling to hire cops, thanks largely to the fact that the starting salary has been set at a near-poverty level of $25,100, and it takes years to climb to a livable wage. Short of fresh reinforcements – while battling the terror threat – Kelly says something has to give. And it will be Operation Impact.
Should he be forced to make that cut, lives, safety and property will be put at risk. Accountability would then necessarily follow. It would fall first on the intransigent shoulders of PBA President Patrick Lynch, who is holding the city hostage by refusing to negotiate within the pattern by which virtually every municipal labor union has won sizable pay hikes.
Teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers and city doctors are among the many who achieved raises far above the inflation rate in return for productivity savings or management concessions. But cops have not been so fortunate because Lynch has never negotiated a contract. He has insisted on arbitration in vain hope of breaking the pattern or as a way to avoid selling his members on reasonable tradeoffs.
It was Lynch who demanded the arbitration that imposed the $25,100 salary and reduced stepups as a way to finance healthy raises for senior cops. Lynch and Mayor Bloomberg agreed to the deal – and now Operation Impact is in jeopardy.
In his frustration, Kelly has urged breaking the bargaining pattern. Bloomberg is adamantly and rightly refusing. Here’s what should happen:
First, Lynch should stop gambling with public safety and start cooperating with arbitration. Stalling to ratchet up the pressure, he has obstructed the process with legal challenges for more than six months. The Public Employment Relations Board has ordered Lynch to get moving – and he must.
Second, Lynch must return to the bargaining table with realistic expectations.
And, third, Bloomberg and labor commissioner James Hanley must work with Kelly to fashion noneconomic proposals that would benefit the NYPD and entitle officers to more money. Would it make sense to offer salary hikes in return for earning college credits? Would the department like to have officers undergo annual physicals? If so, such ideas, or others like them, could be factored into raises.
There’s no time to waste. Operation Impact must not suffer.
