Published: April 14, 2010

One minute after midnight on April 21st is the deadline for contract negotiations between New York City apartment owners and the Local 32BJ union which represents doormen and apartment workers in residential buildings.

Building owners who are represented by the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, say that high unemployment rates show that the devastation has not passed, and that it is important to hold down costs after a five-year period in which rent collections decreased and operating costs increased by 27 percent.

But the Local 32BJ union, which represents 30,000 workers in residential buildings, said that the market hit bottom six months ago, and that the recession did not strike residential buildings owners in the city very hard, with rent declines in the single digits and vacancy rates remaining low.

This month both sides have held preliminary negotiations, yet the real negotiations will begin on tomorrow, when leaders of each side are set to convene at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers for marathon sessions in an effort to avoid a strike before the contract expires at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

The last strike was in 1991 and lasted 12 days. Thousands of New Yorkers found themselves figuring out ways to have packages delivered or the trash taken out as members of other unions, including garbage collectors, generally honored picket lines.

And it won’t be easy for those wishing to sell or buy an apartment. Real estate brokers will not be able to hold or gain access to their exclusives. Anyone scheduled to move in or out of an apartment will not be able to do so. There will be no cable TV or telephone installations should there be a strike.

The Realty Advisory Board advised its members to make contingency plans to deal with a potential walkout. The building workers recently approved a strike, and several thousand workers attended a rally last night on the Upper Eastside.

Doormen, porters, superintendents, elevator operators and handymen — now earn an average of $40,489 a year. Benefits and other costs raise the total per employee to $68,603, said Howard Rothschild, president of the Realty Advisory Board, which represents the owners of 3,200 rental buildings, co-ops and condominiums in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn.

The realty board has proposed several measures to reduce those benefit costs. The proposals would, require current employees to pay 10 percent of their health care premiums; when they currently don’t pay anything. New employees would pay 18 percent of the premium. The owners also want to put new employees into a 401K pension plan instead of the employer-funded one for current workers.

Mr. Fishman told news sources that the union had agreed to smaller wage increases in prior negotiations to avoid health care premium payments from employees. He said the union would not agree to lower wages and the loss of the current pension plan for future employees. “That’s a deal breaker,” he said. “We’re not going to agree to that. There’s nothing to negotiate about that.”

They also report that Howard Rothschild, President of the Realty Advisory Board said the economy would make the bargaining more difficult this year, adding “this is not the time for the traditional wage and benefit increases that we’ve seen in the past.”

In 2006, the union also threatened to strike, but a deal was reached at the last minute.

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