In NYC, looking to protect workers under new owners

Striving to ensure that private sector workers keep their jobs – at least temporarily – when businesses change hands is a legislative move of choice on the New York City Council.

Earlier this fall, the Civil Service and Labor Committee held a hearing on legislation that would require incoming supermarket owners to maintain stores’ staff for three months. The same committee is slated to take up two measures Monday that build on a worker retention act passed in 2002. One would expand the scope of the law within the building service sector, and the other would add food workers to its purview.

Héctor Figueroa, president of the buildings service workers union 32BJ SEIU, said the first bill would extend protections in the 2002 Displaced Building Service Workers Protection Act to an additional 50,000 New Yorkers. The law currently requires landlords or management companies adding a new building to their portfolio to keep its building service personnel for at least 90 days. New executives seeking to trim staff must retain personnel based on seniority under the current law, which also targets larger proprieties and only applies to companies overseeing residences of 50 or more units or supervising more than 100,000 square feet of commercial space.

The new building sector bill, which New York City Councilmen Robert Cornegy and I. Daneek Miller are expected to formally introduce Tuesday, would eliminate a cap that cuts off the retention requirements when workers make more than $25 an hour. Figueroa said this cap has not changed since 2002 and should be lifted to ensure 23,000 commercial cleaning workers are covered when new labor contracts are signed.

Citing the deadly attacks in Paris and Hurricane Sandy, Figueroa said the bill would have the advantage of adding security officers and fire safety directors to the pool of protected personnel.

“I cannot overstate how important it is – the stability of our security officers and fire safety directors, who are responsible for evacuation plans, for communicating with the police, for communicating with tenants,” Figueroa said. “[The legislation] will benefit some 50,000 workers across the city of New York that are the eyes and ears, the front line, in our response to any event in the city.”

Additionally, amendments to the law would extend the requirements to companies that lease at least 10,000 square feet of space and buildings where the city rents more than half the floor space.

“When the city is leasing more than half the space in a building they are, de facto, the managing entity,” Figueroa said. “We want to make sure that the city can live up to the same standard as the private sector.”

Although he has yet to formally introduce the legislation, City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez plans to have a bill adding food service workers to the 2002 law pre-considered at Monday’s hearing. The measure is expected to apply to those working in cafeterias or eateries in sports stadiums, entertainment hubs, universities and large law and business firms.

Rodriguez said he would like to build on the current law’s success, now that it is clear initial concerns about it harming businesses never came to fruition.

“We feel that it is important that workers that provide the services in the food service industry also be protected,” Rodriguez said. “[The law] creates a period of time where workers are able to get, to look for any other opportunities that they may have, when there is a new buyer of the business.”

Miller’s supermarket bill introduced earlier this fall, which is still in committee, proved contentious. Industry representatives contended it would buoy unions at the expense of sound economic policy, while supporters on the Council said they had seen new owners dismiss entire teams at stores and attempt to stifle union organizing.

But Figueroa said he did not anticipate broadening the building service workers’ protections would be controversial with city lawmakers or with the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The union is just beginning to discuss the legislation with the Real Estate Board of New York. Figueroa said his union negotiated with REBNY on the original 2002 legislation, which the chief lobbying group for the real estate industry did not oppose. REBNY did not respond to a request for comment.