Miscellaneous

A Sip of COLA for NY Court Employees

By Anne Skove, Esq.

In the private sector (so we hear) getting a 6% raise is what they do when they're too lazy to fire you. In the public sector (as we well know) it's considered a great honor.

Guess how honored New York Unified Court System employees feel right now?

Their union just negotiated a 4-year agreement, retroactive to April 2007. The deal increases salaries, improves pay in some areas, enhances longevity bonuses (we don't quite know what these are, but it sounds like a euphemism for gray hairs -- "this light really brings out my longevity bonuses!"), improves payments to the Employee Benefit Fund and Labor-Management programs (?), and increases funding for body armor.

So, they may not be able to afford college for their kids, but at least they'll be bullet-proof!

The raise amounts to 3% per year (starting in 2007), with 4% in 2010. Basically, this equals a cost of living allowance (or COLA).

Employees making over $115K must wait until a judicial pay raise is enacted. Is this a carrot/stick approach to the much sought-after New York judicial salary increase? The carrot being the raise for these higher-paid employees, who, perhaps, wield more influence over key legislators in the judicial salary fight. This is entirely conjecture! Anyone who really knows something, please feel free to share.

See the union press release, and NY Court Employees Set to Get Contract Raises, Newsday (May 8, 2008).

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).