Olatoye is under constant scrutiny by elected officials, tenants and New York media for the deteriorating conditions in public housing across the city. | William Alatriste/City Hall Unions giving little as NYCHA seeks systemic fixes

Paid time off for holiday shopping, shortened schedules on summer days and higher wages for staggered shifts are among the benefits enjoyed by New York City Housing Authority workers.

As the city’s public housing stock crumbles around them, unionized workers are fighting to hold onto perks that cost the city money and manpower, while delaying changes housing authority officials say would improve the quality of life for the 400,000 residents living in their deteriorating buildings.


Over the past four years, housing authority Chairwoman Shola Olatoye has battled with some of the 30 unions representing the workforce that tends to the 2,462 buildings she runs. She has often found herself on the losing side, with City Hall officials staying out of the fray.

Meanwhile, her agency spent $341 million from 2014 through 2017 on overtime costs dictated by labor contracts between the city and the unions. That nearly totals the $400 million Mayor Bill de Blasio is seeking from Gov. Andrew Cuomo in past and future budget requests, which has been central to an ongoing feud between the two Democrats.

Olatoye is under constant scrutiny by elected officials, tenants and New York media for the deteriorating conditions in public housing across the city. She is ultimately responsible for the vast problems plaguing the authority, from lapsed lead paint inspections that were misreported to federal authorities to system-wide heating outages during a particularly frigid winter.

But behind the scenes, she has pushed for reforms she believes would trim costs and improve maintenance of the buildings she runs, which need at least $25 billion in capital repairs. Organized labor has at times proven as much a challenge as insufficient funds and outdated infrastructure.

Labor leaders have bargained for optimal working conditions for their members, as union heads typically do. They see Olatoye as another ineffective manager at the authority who has failed to meet the needs of the residents while presiding over a system hobbled by municipal bureaucracy, unchecked waste and politics.

Shortly after de Blasio appointed her in 2014, Olatoye proposed altering the hours of maintenance workers, caretakers, property management staff and other skilled trades who worked only on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Figuring repairs aren’t needed on a fixed schedule, she suggested staggered shifts, including weekends, for the same rate of pay.

Between 2014 and 2017, the housing authority spent a little more than $4 million in shift differential pay. Though the cost is small, she believes the need is great: In January of this year, residents requested 1,322 emergency service repairs daily between 4:30 p.m. and 8 a.m., for a total of 27,763 calls for the month.

The staggered shift idea was panned by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 7,635 workers at the housing authority.

Two years later, after several revisions, Olatoye was able to implement an abbreviated version of her original idea. At 12 sites, maintenance workers and caretakers can opt for different shifts for a higher rate of pay and a one-time bonus.

Union president Gregory Floyd said the expanded proposal would have put workers in danger with little reward for residents.

“NYCHA has a lot of violence; members have been assaulted,” he said during a recent interview. “The notion that if you clean a hallway at 6 in the morning you’re going to get more efficient than cleaning at 8 o’clock — it’s the same cleaning.”

Floyd’s concerns were not Olatoye’s only roadblock.

Multiple sources said City Hall officials did not want to disrupt their negotiations with the city’s entire unionized workforce, which was without contracts when de Blasio took office. Instead, the administration advised the union and housing authority to revisit the issue after the Teamsters contract was agreed upon, according to a memo between the parties.

“They weren’t willing to take on the unions on any of these issues. There were ways that she could have saved money and provided better service, but nobody was willing to take on the unions for the tenants,” one source familiar with the negotiations said.

Labor relations commissioner Bob Linn “refused” to embrace any of her proposals, the source added.

“That is not accurate,” City Hall spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said. “The Teamsters filed litigation because they did not believe that flexible shifts were permitted under their contract, and NYCHA was enjoined from proceeding.”

She said fewer workers have volunteered for shift changes than the authority had hoped, and the city will “revisit the issue of work schedules in the upcoming round of bargaining.”

NYCHA is continuing to push for further work schedule flexibility without extra pay to the employees.

“This is about what’s best for residents,” housing authority spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said. “They need and deserve faster repairs and better service outside of the traditional work hours.”

The housing authority emailed its staff recently, instructing them to stick to a strict work schedule to contain overtime costs.

“Effective February 20, 2018 overtime-eligible employees of the Leased Housing Department cannot arrive at their respective work location more than 10 minutes prior to their scheduled start time and cannot depart more than 10 minutes later than scheduled departure time,” according to the memo, which was obtained by POLITICO from several sources. During those 10-minute windows, employees “may not perform work related activities,” unless authorized by a supervisor, it advised. Those who do, it says, “will be paid and disciplined appropriately.”

Among Teamsters Local 237’s long-standing benefits are shortened summer workdays and paid holiday shopping hours — a practice that, although not written into the union’s labor contract, has been in use for several decades. Workers are permitted to take paid time off during the workday to complete holiday shopping.

“In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season, and in recognition of your efforts throughout the year, please be advised that all full- time employees will be granted two hours of excused time between December 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014,” reads a memo sent to employees to inform them of the benefit. “Feel free to use the time for holiday preparations, personal matters, or just to give yourself a well-deserved break.”

Financial officers at the housing authority took notice of the allocation in the agency’s budget and flagged it for Olatoye, who then sought to eliminate the cost and repurpose the money to hire more workers.

Faced with losing the yearslong benefit, Local 237 filed a lawsuit with the city’s Office of Collective Bargaining, alleging the paid time amounted to “past practice” and therefore could not be taken away.

The office, whose board includes mayoral appointees, sided with the union, and the perk continues.

Floyd said he and most workers were unaware of the perk until the housing authority tried to take it away for leverage in contract negotiations.

“It was done for punishment, it wasn’t done for budgetary reasons,” Floyd said. “It was done for punishment, and that is how we won it back.”

Asked if he thought it was a waste of money, considering the agency’s lack of cash for crucial repairs, Floyd said, “Those aren’t perks, those are negotiated contracts.”

His members are also allowed to leave work one hour early between July 1 and Labor Day each summer if they work in un-air-conditioned offices. The perk excludes skilled trades workers.

The authority’s battle with Floyd’s union played a role in one of the authority’s most recent public failures — heating outages for nearly 323,000 residents this winter.

The agency blames the union for failing to properly train heating plant technicians to fix boilers, and is instead seeking private companies to manage 69 developments.

The technicians make between $30,662 and $50,379 a year, and more than half lack adequate training, NYCHA officials told the Council in a Feb. 21 letter. The authority wrote it was working with unions to improve training and retain qualified technicians.

Union leaders said the housing authority is responsible for its staffing shortage: The number of boiler technicians dropped from 345 in 2013 to 250 last year.

"Last summer they made intentions clear, telling us that privatizing 69 boiler plants was the answer. We reviewed that request … and the industry standards and responded that we can do it at half the cost internally including new hires,” union representative Chuck Norman said at the Feb. 6 Council hearing.

Both sides say the city has not offered a civil service exam necessary to become a heating plant technician since 2015. Goldstein said it is provided every three years and will be given again in August. In the interim, NYCHA has been hiring technicians provisionally.

Despite her labor battles, Olatoye won a federal court case this month against the local plumbers union, which sued over her interpretation of a compensatory time payout policy. The court ruled NYCHA has the right to cap cash payouts for comp time upon a worker’s retirement.

Through a spokesman, the plumbers union declined to comment for this story.

Housing authority plumbers are among the highest-paid workers in the city.

In 2016, the city’s top overtime earner was NYCHA plumber Vincenzo Giurbino, who was paid $228,000 above his $141,152 salary that year, according to payroll records. In fact, five of the top 10 overtime payments went to housing authority plumbers over the past two years.

Olatoye has another opportunity to target what she views as costly union benefits: A project labor agreement between NYCHA and the Building and Construction Trades Council that took effect in 2015 is expiring in June.

Tenants have criticized the current agreement for failing to provide jobs for housing authority residents, and de Blasio promised clearer reporting on employment figures during a town hall meeting in December.

Blake said NYCHA has helped 190 residents get into construction apprenticeship programs. A building trades organization spokesman, Jordan Isenstadt, said “472 opportunities for employment were created as a direct result of the PLA in zip codes provided by NYCHA.”

Charlene Nimmons, a tenant who founded a NYCHA advocacy nonprofit, said those numbers have not translated into jobs for residents.

“They missed the targets. There are no positions that take you any further than an apprenticeship,” she said. “They are not putting people to work. It’s a very small percentage of people who are getting jobs.”

Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, recently urged the de Blasio administration to evaluate the effectiveness of the agreement before signing another one.

Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP in New York and a friend of Olatoye’s, expressed optimism the dueling parties can start working together.

"Sometimes leadership in unions do change — they change their attitude,” she said. “I don't think her position was to destroy the union but to work with them to try to get services for the tenants."