The Executive Board and I have been working vigorously to improve your working conditions and to protect your employment rights.
For the past several months, COBA, along with ten other uniformed unions that collectively represent over 32,000 uniformed members, including Correction Officers, Correction Captains, Assistant Deputy and Deputy Wardens, Fire Fighters, Fire Officers, NYPD Sergeants, Detectives, Lieutenants, Captains, and Sanitation Supervisors (collectively the “uniformed coalition”) have been negotiating a new economic agreement with the City of New York. I was nominated by the other Union Presidents in the Coalition to serve as a Co-Chair of the coalition, placing me at the forefront of the negotiations with New York City.
From the very beginning of this “uniformed coalition,” my mission was to ensure that your voices would be at the forefront with me, helping to direct our negotiations toward wage increases that make our job better than before.
After many rounds of discussions and intense negotiation sessions, we secured a significant raise of 18.77% over five years for ALL Correction Officers. An extra .21% will be added to the economic package in Phase II of our negotiations.
The economic package completes Phase I of our negotiations. We will soon begin negotiating all remaining issues to finalize the contract in Phase II of our negotiations. During this final phase, we will be negotiating directly with the Office of Labor Relations all the issues that are unique to Correction Officers and our working conditions, separate and apart from the other uniformed unions that were part of the economic negotiations – this is called “Unit Bargaining”. Consistent with our By-Laws, I have formed a “Collective Bargaining Committee” that will seek the input of our members, the Delegates, and the Executive Board as we focus on Unit Bargaining. The committee will bring forth any issues and concerns you have raised to your Delegates and the Executive Board. We will then make our determination on how to best proceed with this information in our negotiations.
While we kept Phase I of these negotiations confidential in order to avoid negotiating specifics in public, we did however, maintain a very public fight for the raises that we rightfully deserve.
We launched a series of commercials on social media reminding City Hall, the City Council and the public of all the many unprecedented challenges our members have faced and continue to face. We are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid and we deserve a contract that reflects the essential services we provide in keeping NYC safe every day.
More than any other workforce in the City of New York, our officers have dealt with challenge after challenge after challenge. Among our biggest challenges remains the ongoing staffing crisis. We are down 30% in our headcount from 2019. The previous administration did everything possible to defund and destroy us, but we did not let that happen!
With this new economic agreement and significant wage increases, COBA, for the first time in many years, has finally gotten City Hall to invest in us and support us. We have many more issues to address before we can see a major increase in our headcount, but it is our hope that these new raises will help recruit the best possible men and women to take this job and encourage our veteran officers to remain in this job.
We will continue to keep you updated as our unit bargaining negotiations progress. Rest assured, we will not settle for any deal that doesn’t reflect the tremendous sacrifices we make as an essential municipal workforce, proudly keeping New York City safe, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
In solidarity,
Benny Boscio
President