Published: April 16, 2010
Intensive contract negotiations are underway to avert a strike next week of nearly 30,000 doormen, porters, concierges and other apartment workers in the city. The workers say they will strike if building owners try to reduce health and retirement benefits and sick days.
Contract negotiations resumed yesterday at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Mike Fishman, president of the union SEIU Local 32BJ, says the two sides are still far apart.
Building owners say the recession has hit them hard; rents are lower and operating costs are higher. They say they need workers to make concessions this year.
Fishman says even though the real estate industry took a big hit during the recession, apartment workers shouldn't have to absorb that blow.
"Four years ago, when things were good, they didn't consider us their partners in profit, and they were making a huge profit in those days, and we don't consider ourselves their partners in pain right now," Fishman says.
More than a million people in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan live in the buildings where these union members work.
“The truth of the matter is, hiring a doorman is not just hiring a person off the street,” Fishman says. “These are people who become part of people's families, live in their houses, live with them everyday, and it's very important that that person be somebody that they are comfortable with and that they get to know.”
The union has already assembled 1,000 strike captains in preparation for the possible strike.
Strike captain James Carrasquillo says residents in his Lower Manhattan building will have a hard time picking up their dry cleaning or taking out the garbage on their own.
"It's a certain category of people that we're dealing with," Carrasquillo says. "They are high-scale people, and they're not used to this. That's why we're here to service them."
Carrasquillo has been a doorman in Lower Manhattan for 22 years and says at his salary of $40,000 a year, he can't afford to give up any health benefits or sick days.
