PEF members approve 3-year deal

Rank and file employees of the Public Employees Federation have approved a contract that brings raises of 3 percent in each of the deal’s three years as well as a lump-sum payment of $3,000. 

More than 50 percent of the union’s 51,000 members voted to approve the deal, with 95 percent of those in favor of the agreement, which is retroactive to April and runs through April 2026. The ratification means that PEF members are now eligible to take up to 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave to bond with a newborn, fostered or adopted child.  

“As a labor union, we believe that unity builds power,” PEF’s president, Wayne Spence, said in a statement. “Our unity on this contract positions us for gains in the legislature, on the job, and in the community. Our members saw the value of this contract and they overwhelmingly stood behind it.”  

The federation is the state’s second-largest employee union after the Civil Service Employees Association. The union represents more than 3,000 titles in every state agency, among them nurses, teachers, social workers, doctors, engineers, counselors, parole officers, lawyers and IT specialists.

Spence, who has negotiated four statewide contracts during his eight years as the union’s president, noted that union members also received a first-of-its-kind $600 higher education differential and a $400 dental stipend, pending the state’s new dental services contract and in addition to current benefits. 

"This contract fairly compensates the hard-working members of the Public Employees Federation who provide critical expertise to benefit New Yorkers each day," Governor Kathy Hochul said following the deal’s ratification. 

The contract otherwise makes no changes to employees’ share of health-care premiums. The deal also includes funding of labor-management initiatives and an increase in hazardous duty pay from $.75 per hour to $.90 per hour effective last April and to $1 an hour effective next April. 

It does include changes in longevity lump-sum payments starting in the agreement’s third year, when payments due in April 2025 will be based on 12, 17 or 22 years of continuous state service, rather than the current five, 10 and 15 years. Workers who received longevity payments based on the years at top-of-grade criteria will continue to receive that award in 2025 and thereafter until they are eligible for the next award under the years of state service criteria.

The roughly 37,000 members of the United University Professions, which represents faculty and professional staff at the State University of New York, will start voting Aug. 10 on a four-year deal retroactive to 2022. 

That agreement includes across-the-board raises of 2 percent in 2022 and then 3 percent each year through 2025 as well as a $3,000 lump-sum bonus and a 12-week parental leave provision. It also contains increases in per-course minimum payment for contingents and living-wage expenses intended to raise minimum salaries for the union’s lowest-paid academics and professionals.

CSEA members ratified a five-year deal last year. The multi-year pact, retroactive to April 2021 and running through April 2026, brought with it 13 percent raises through the life of the deal.

richardk@thechiefleader.com