Published: April 21, 2010
New York, April 21 (EFE) .- Thousands of doormen of skyscrapers and residential buildings in New York today announced that property owners agreed to implement a wage increase of 10 percent, which ruled out the first strike in the sector in almost twenty years.
This morning, shortly after the deadline imposed to reach an agreement, members of the union 32BJ, which brings together 30,000 workers in this sector, and representatives of the Real Estate Advisory Board, which brings together owners, closed a new contract.
Besides the wage increase, the group of doormen also got their employers commitment to continue to pay for one hundred percent of the cost of healthcare, one of its major demands after the owners proposed that workers now pay 10 percent the annual total.
"We were united and fought for wage increases to help thousands of men and women who work hard every day in one of the most expensive cities in the world," he said today the union president Mike Fishman in a press release.
Fisham also said that the new agreement, valid for four years, is "an important victory for New York to remain a place where working people can call home" and highlighted the progress made in negotiations on health and pension.
The agreement establishes an improvement in employer contributions to health insurance for about 20 percent, the same percentage also agreed to increase their contributions to retirement plans that employees have.
The new agreement have not been altered vacation days and sick available to doormen, nor the existing regulation concerning compensation for overtime worked.
"It's a good contract. I am happy for this agreement. I have to support my mother and my children, and now I can keep doing it," he said in a statement Nelzon Núñez, a janitor who has worked for 27 years in building in the New York’s neighborhood of Upper East Side in Manhattan.
The salary of a janitor in the Big Apple is on average $ 40,000, according to the Service Employees International Union, and $68,000, according to the Real Estate Advisory Board.
The labor agreement not only affects this figure but other workers of the great buildings of New York, such as maintenance staff, cleaners and custodians, as it was feared that, should go on strike, some buildings would have been a real mess.
In the memory of many New Yorkers was still fresh the last stoppage in the sector in 1991, when the doormen staged a protest that lasted about two weeks.
"This agreement is very good news for those 30,000 professionals for thousands of homeowners and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who would have suffered the consequences of a strike," said in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg a statement.
According to the mayor, "In these difficult economic times, it should be appreciated that both parties could work creatively to create a real cost savings could be reflected in wage increases for workers."
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