Hundreds of NYPD sergeants are expected to protest outside Mayor Adams’ upcoming “State of the City” address over a bizarre contract impasse that’s left some sergeants with less pay than the police officers they supervise, union officials said Tuesday.
The off-duty sergeants, as well as their supporters in the City Council, will converge on the Apollo Theater in Harlem on Thursday, where Mayor Adams will discuss last year’s successes — which includes a 5% reduction in crime — and outline his plans for the next year.
Thursday’s rally will be the first time police officers have publicly protested against Adams, a retired NYPD captain.
“This union has handled itself in a professional manner in trying to negotiate fairly,” Sergeants Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong told the Daily News Tuesday. “We’ve tried to do it behind closed doors, but all we’re getting is lip service. The mayor has let this fall on deaf ears, so if we’re not on the top of his list, we want him to know that he’s on the top of our list.”
Sgt. Christopher Leap, one of two NYPD supervisors shot and wounded by an armed gang member suspected of robbing a Lower East Side mah-jongg parlor will be among the speakers railing against the mayor on Thursday.
The city’s sergeants haven’t had a contract in two years because of an ongoing wage disparity affecting more than 1,200 supervisors that began when the city increased the salaries of rank-and-file police officers.
After the city boosted salaries of long-serving cops, the SBA union realized that many sergeants are now earning less than the officers they oversee — a situation that makes no sense, Vallelong said.
As contract negotiations drag on, the city’s Office of Labor Relations has asked the union to agree to givebacks to fix a problem they created, he said.
With ongoing discussions bearing no fruit, Vallelong filed a “declaration of impasse” and called in a state mediator to help in October, but still nothing has been agreed to.
The impasse comes as the Adams administration repeatedly boasts it has successfully negotiated contracts “with unions representing nearly 97% of the city’s workforce.”
Over the past year, the city has negotiated contracts with the Police Benevolent Association, United Federation of Teachers, United Probation Officers Association and Uniformed Sanitation Workers’ Union, to name a few.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Adams said City Hall is “currently going through the mediation process with the Sergeants Benevolent Association and are committed to coming to a fair solution that will continue to protect public safety.”
Under the expired contract, the base pay for sergeants, who supervise several cops at a time while responding to 911 calls, starts at $98,000 a year and balloons to about $118,000 within five years. After the newest contract with the PBA, experienced police officers can earn about $115,000, SBA members said.
The city put itself in a bind by increasing rank-and-file police officer wages without providing comparable increases to supervisory ranks, Vallelong said.
“Now you have new sergeants making less than top-pay police officers,” the union president said. “The OLR didn’t realize your salary can’t be less than what it was before you get promoted. There’s no other rank on the job this has happened to.”
A city official with knowledge of the contract negotiations said that the SBA has been offered wage increases of 18.5% over a five-year term like other uniform services.
By honing in on the wage disparity, the union is “depriving their members of the uniform coalition wage increases,” the official said.
Police officers become sergeants after studying and taking a civil service exam, so a great deal of work and effort goes into becoming a sergeant — something the rank and file may not want to do if they know they can get the same salary as a cop if they work long enough, Vallelong said.
The city is spending millions to level the playing field by promoting sergeants to the highest pay level, Vallelong said. During contract negotiations, the SBA provided several possible fixes, including a more equitable pay scale program, but the city didn’t want to hear any of them, Vallelong said.
“We laid out the perfect plan to fix it and either they didn’t comprehend or they didn’t like the fact we did it for them,” Vallelong said about OLR.
“You would think that the mayor being a former cop — and knowing about this injustice — the smart decision is to fix it,” he said. “That’s what leaders do. They see a problem and then they fix the problem and move on.”
If a contract isn’t negotiated, things will get worse before they get better — by July, 1,100 sergeants will have vested their pensions and would be free to retire, Vallelong said. There are currently 4,300 sergeants in the NYPD, which has about 36,000 members.
“You don’t think that 70% of them are going to retire?” Vallelong asked, adding that 71 sergeants have already put in their papers this month alone. “That’s going to be a significant hit to the department.”