Union workers to protest at Spano's house tomorrow

By GLENN BLAIN  THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: August 29, 2007)

Frustrated in their demands for a new contract, members of Westchester's largest public employees union will take their gripes to County Executive Andrew Spano's neighborhood tomorrow.

The Civil Service Employees Association Unit 9200, which represents about 4,000 county workers in clerical and middle-management jobs, is planning a 5:30 p.m. protest across the street from Spano's home in Yorktown Heights. 
"We just want to get (the Spano administration) to the table and start talking about a whole deal," said union President Jack McPhillips. "He won't come to us, so we are going to him."

The union has been without a contract since the end of 2005, and McPhillips complained that negotiations aimed at reaching a new agreement have been at a standstill for months. "We've had what I would classify as informal talks with the negotiator, but we haven't had formal negotiations in quite a while," McPhillips said.

Deputy County Executive Larry Schwartz described McPhillips' claim as "nonsense," saying the talks with county negotiator Mike Wittenberg do represent formal negotiations.
"We've bargained in good faith, and every time there is another meeting, they change their minds," Schwartz said. "To say there has not been active negotiations for months - I don't know what planet Jack is living on."

McPhillips complained that the county has only offered the union a contract that includes 3 percent annual raises. Those raises would match those budgeted for most nonunion county employees this year and last. But those raises, according to McPhillips, do not match what other county unions, including those representing police and corrections officers, have recently received. Those unions received raises starting at 4 percent.

Schwartz, though, disputed that account, saying the county has made additional offers to the union. He declined to provide details of those other offers.
While the CSEA has staged protests outside Spano's office and outside a political fundraiser he held earlier in the year, Thursday's event will be the union's first at his home.
The tactic, however, is not without precedent. In the fall of 2003, during another contentious contract dispute, CSEA members staged a protest outside Schwartz's home. A deal between the union and the county was finally reached in June of the following year.

Spano has been on vacation in Saratoga this week and it was uncertain yesterday whether he would be home at the time of the protest.
"If they want to waste time and walk around in circles, so be it," Schwartz said of the protest. "What they should do is stop talking in circles and sit down and get this done for their members."