Chair Riley questions Banks on 32BJ contract structure
Chair Riley asks Banks about the current 32BJ contract. Banks clarifies the existing collective bargaining agreement covers residential workers but not security, and the new development agreement would cover all workforce and guarantee prevailing wage. He confirms 32BJ would support the project if the agreement is reached.
Do any council members have any questions for this panel?
Chair Riley?
Yes.
First and foremost, thank you so much for coming down here and testifying.
We do appreciate your testimony.
That helps us make a very important decision regarding this project.
Just two questions for each of you.
First, with 32BJ, do they currently have a...
I guess a contract with you guys currently right now, if they do negotiate a new contract, would that interfere with the current contract that they have with you guys?
Thank you for that question.
So currently there's a collective bargaining agreement, right, that is in place, that is in place that covers all of our residential workers.
There's two in the Bronx, one for Co-op City and one for properties outside of Co-op City.
And so that collective bargaining agreement covers that.
What we have done and how we engage with developers across the city is then we have a new development agreement when new projects come online.
And that new development agreement sort of guarantees the prevailing wage standards.
But it also covers our security workforce that the CBA does not cover.
And so we make that extremely clear.
We've explained this to FIPS multiple times that it's not a duplicate duplicative of the collective bargaining agreement.
And also.
You can't just amend a collective bargaining agreement.
There are standards, there's laws, there's processes in place that doesn't allow that to happen.
So this new development agreement is a second agreement that covers all the workforce and guarantees.
Prevailing wage.