Chief Leader

The union also took issue with the claim by the Bloomberg administration that it would have disrupted the city's bargaining structure to give cops bigger raises than other employee unions negotiated, stating that on numerous occasions the administration has deviated from contract patterns without triggering chaos.

Raises Diluted by Concessions

The PBA had some success in persuading the chair of the three-person arbitration panel, Susan Mackenzie, to depart from the bargaining pattern that had been established in contracts reached by other uniformed unions.

But while the raises of 4.5 and 5 percent that she granted for PBA members totaled 3.5 percent more than the increases negotiated by other uniformed unions covering a comparable period, she also imposed givebacks that offset a significant part of the additional cost to the city. The other two panel members were representatives of the PBA and the Bloomberg administration; the PBA rep declined to endorse the award because of those concessions.

A transcript of a Nov. 6, 2007 hearing shows Mr. Lynch arguing for a larger raise in part because, "What we do as a New York City Police Officer is different than most jobs, by what we deal with, the training we go through to get there."

He explained, "Most jobs, the boss gets to the job, he says 'come follow me' and they go handle the job. For a New York City Police Officer, you're always the first one to respond and the first one on the scene of any type of situation, and all else follows what a New York City Police Officer does ... and you're held accountable for that. You're held responsible for the decisions you make."

Second-Guessed At Leisure

And, he testified later, that scrutiny can come from "groups of attorneys, groups of oversight panels, groups of the general public, journalists. They have a whole lot of time to do what a New York City Police Officer had to make a decision [about] literally at that moment at that time."

Earlier in that hearing, Peter M. Fishbein, an attorney with the PBA's outside counsel, was more explicit in contrasting the extent to which he claimed cops must show initiative and good judgment with the duties performed by other uniformed workers in entry-level titles.

A Police Officer, he told the arbitrators, "has to respond immediately to all kinds of unanticipated, unexpected things. He's dealing with dangerous people, armed people, disturbed people, stressed people, people of different cultures and different languages, drugs, gangs ... trying to get information about potential terrorists. That's the kind of work that requires mental skills."

He continued, "You have to have education, intelligence, maturity. You have to be able to make quick decisions with good judgments. You have to have interpersonal relations."

On the other hand, Mr. Fishbein asserted, other uniformed employees were relied on primarily for their physical skills, with decision-making in most instances left to their supervisors.

Sanitation Workers, he said, simply work their collection routes. "That's a physical job. It requires none of the judgment and education and intelligence and sensitivity that the police have to have on their work.

COs' 'Controlled Environment'

"The same goes for the Corrections Officer," the attorney continued. "The Corrections Officers are working in a totally controlled environment. The people they're supervising aren't people out on the street who you never know how they're going to react. They are people who are behind bars, unarmed, under constant surveillance. Supervisors are ... right within the same prison building, and the supervisors are right there on call to assist them.

"The kind of skills they need," Mr. Fishbein went on, "are, they have to be very careful, they have to follow established routines, they have to make sure that they don't do anything outside what they're supposed to do because they might create some possibility of danger. But it's not the kind of mental abilities and skills that a police officer has."

Firefighters 'Directly Supervised'

Firefighters, he added, spend much of their time either in the firehouse or responding to false alarms or minor fires. "Periodically, the Firefighters get called to major fires, and that's clearly very dangerous work, but it's essentially physical work. What happens is the major fires in New York City occur infrequently enough so that there are large groups of Firefighters and superior officers and very senior superior officers right on the spot. That's direct supervision.

"And again," Mr. Fishbein continued, "the Firefighter's job is mainly physical. It does not require nearly the kinds of mental abilities - you have interpersonal relationship abilities, education, judgment - that a Police Officer requires."

Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy responded, "Clearly he doesn't know anything about what it is that Firefighters do. The only thing that he said that was accurate was that Firefighters have a very dangerous job."

The physical nature of their work, Mr. Cassidy said in a May 30 interview, should not obscure the amount of thinking that goes into the job.

Must Constantly Adapt

"Firefighters must have a complete knowledge of firefighting procedures that vary with the location of the fire, the type of fire, the type of building, whether your company is first-due or second-due or third-due." His members must also be versed in dealing with hazardous materials and weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Cassidy said, as well as having a thorough knowledge of the city Building Code and Fire Code.

"I think these are all reasons the department almost doubled the time Firefighters spend in the Academy" during their training period, the UFA leader said.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook also questioned Mr. Fishbein's analysis, noting that the criminals cops encounter can be just as devious and "assaultive" when they're behind bars. Last week, he said, two of his members had discovered that a prisoner they were transporting had managed to conceal a .25 gun in his sneaker.

Keep Jails Under Control

"We're not faced with major riots or other disturbances, or escapes, and a big part of the reason is the intelligence of the Correction Officers working in the system," Mr. Seabrook said. "It takes a special kind of person to deal with the individuals in the jail system - they have multiple personalities, and handling them is a task unto itself."

Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association President Harry Nespoli contended that his members were "dead even" with Police Officers when it came to responsibilities, noting that they were charged with safely and efficiently handling collection vehicles "that are worth $250,000 per truck.

"We have men that have college degrees," Mr. Nespoli said of his members. "Some two-year degrees, some even four-year degrees. And in some cases we've got Police Officers coming over to work in Sanitation."

In pressing Ms. Mackenzie to not deviate from the wage pattern established by contracts for other uniformed unions, city attorneys contended that to do so would disrupt longtime bargaining relationships, in addition to putting an unwarranted strain on the city's budget at a time when it was retrenching fiscally.

Mr. Fishbein contended that any city budget was a product of spending priorities and that the Bloomberg administration's ability in the past to produce sizable surpluses after warning of gaping deficits showed that a larger PBA award could be managed without undue pain.

He also took issue with the city's insistence that maintaining patterns was vital for smooth labor relations, claiming that Mr. Bloomberg had routinely massaged the numbers to artificially reconcile differences among various unions' contracts that in fact gave some an advantage over others.

He cited the 2002 PBA arbitration as an example. That panel's chairman, Walter Eischen, gave the PBA the same two 5-percent increases and 1.5 percent in additional economic improvements that had been negotiated by a coalition of other uniformed unions, including the Sergeants Benevolent Association and the Detectives Endowment Association. He did so, however, over a 24-month period, while the coalition's contract lasted 30 months, meaning the PBA did better since it could negotiate additional gains in the future for the missing six-month period.

'No Leap-Frogging'

"So for the SBA and the DEA there was no catch-up and no leap-frogging," Mr. Fishbein stated, contrary to concerns the city had raised in this arbitration about the impact of giving PBA members better terms. (In this round, however, the other uniformed unions have reopener clauses that permit them to discuss ways of getting the additional raises the arbitration award gave to the PBA, and they are expected to discuss the matter with Labor Relations Commissioner James F. Hanley June 4.)

Mr. Fishbein also accused city officials of "jiggling and manipulating" contract costs to give the illusion that they conformed to bargaining patterns in cases where they didn't. As an example, he cited an agreement six years ago under which Teachers received an additional 3-percent raise in return for extending their workdays by 10 minutes, with the Bloomberg administration contending that this led to added instruction and qualified as a productivity improvement.

He contended there was no substantive change that occurred, however, saying, "The Teachers used their 10 minutes to do what they did before this agreement. Teachers prepare lessons, grade papers, consult with students, do some Teacher training."

Hanley Counters

Mr. Hanley took issue with his claims on both 2002 contracts. He said Mr. Eischen's arbitration award was influenced by the terrorist attacks a year earlier - which were cited in explaining the award's exceeding the uniformed coalition deal that was reached six weeks prior to 9/11.

Even so, Mr. Hanley noted, "Everybody got the same across-the-board increases - the PBA just got them under a contract that was six months shorter - and the same additional compensation differential, only that was paid three months sooner" to Police Officers than to other uniformed workers.

As to the extra raise for UFT members that year, Mr. Hanley said, "We paid them dollar for dollar for the additional time worked."

Scoffs at Rescheduling Savings

Mr. Fishbein also disputed one of the claimed productivity savings that came out of the 2005 PBA arbitration: the granting of the right to reschedule Police Officers' tours 15 days per year without paying overtime, rather than the old maximum of 10. Mr. Fishbein contended that the NYPD had never rescheduled cops for as many as 10 days a year - ''it had always been that it used one or two," and that while there had been some increase since the arbitration award three years ago, officers were still being rescheduled for an average of fewer than 10 days annually.

This meant, he said, that the city had not derived the .61 percent savings from the rescheduling change that it had estimated, further placing the 2005 PBA award out of sync with other contracts negotiated for that round. (Ms. McKenzie's award ultimately increased the rescheduling limit to 20 days, with another estimated .61 percent savings to the city.) But this has not wreaked havoc on the bargaining process, he stated.

Wolf Cry a Diversion

Mr. Fishbein also contended that by warning of the repercussions if the PBA award broke parity, city officials had again cried wolf in an attempt to distract the arbitrators from their mandate, which was to consider Police Officer pay in the context of what cops in neighboring departments receive.

If the arbitrators concluded that an existing contract pattern had to be preserved, the PBA attorney said, that "basically means that there's no collective bargaining once the initial" deal is reached - and reached, he noted, with a union of the city's choosing which was unlikely to be the one that could present the strongest case.

"What the city is telling you is these hearings are basically a waste of time," he testified. "You don't have to worry about this or pay any attention to this. All you have to do is get what this - the settlement that the city said is the pattern for this round, determine what the net cost is and that's it; that's what you give to the PBA - nothing and no other considerations should be in effect."

'Contradicts the Taylor Law'

"The problem with the city's case," Mr. Fishbein continued, "is it's directly contrary to the Taylor Law ... [which] says that the panel is supposed to make a just and reasonable determination of the compensation the police should get based primarily on what other employees performing similar services with similar skills under similar working conditions get. Now that's widely recognized to mean other police in comparable jurisdictions."

The battle between the PBA and the Giuliani administration a decade ago over the bill that allowed the union to go before the Public Employment Relations Board rather than the city Board of Collective Bargaining for contract arbitration, Mr. Fishbein said, revolved around the belief on both sides that the change would unyoke Police Officers from the wage pattern established with other municipal unions and allow them to have their wages considered alongside those of other police officers.