Impasse in village contract talks

The Village of Lawrence and the union representing its 31 civil service employees will meet with a Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) mediator in the near future in an effort to overcome the impasse in contract negotiations.
In May of 2010, the most recent agreement between the non-supervisory employees and Lawrence expired. Last year the employees voted to replace the Civil Service Employees Association as its union with the United Public Service Employees Union (UPSEU).
Despite the change, negotiations have not progressed and the UPSEU filed a declaration of impasse with PERB on May 4. “The [Lawrence] workers were unhappy and we won the election,” said UPSEU representative Jim Gangale. “There have been four negotiating sessions. We filed for mediation with PERB because there have not been wage increases and at this point we have reached an impasse. To be without a contract for five years makes no sense.”
Recently, the Ronkonkoma-based UPSEU has had success with several public employee groups replacing CSEA. “We believe we have a presence,” Gangale said. “[The CSEA] business agent never came around. We’ve been in business a long time and been fairly successful. We worked hard to achieve that.”
PERB was created as part of New York State’s Taylor Law that was enacted in 1967, to administer the law that applies to all state public employees. Among the things the law covers is establishing impasse procedures for the resolution of disputes in negotiations between public employees and public employers.

According to Mayor Martin Oliner, there have been formal and informal discussions since October. Oliner said that the village “would love to resolve this,” but believes the contract needs reworking. “Our contract is antiquated,” he said. “It’s existed for at least 25 years and there are provisions that don’t make sense. We need to negotiate.”
Oliner denied the union charge that Lawrence is using part-time workers to do full-time work, which, Gangale said, is a violation of the contract. Those part-timers also have no benefits. The union filed a grievance.
At the May 14 village board meeting, the trustees unanimously approved an interim agreement with the UPSEU regarding the employees’ vision benefits.
In spite of that Gangale claims that Oliner is impeding negotiations. “Based on the mayor’s track record I’m not sure anything will get done until he leaves.”