City of Bayonne, workers dispute whether a contract offer is even on the table

Is there a contract offer on the table or not?

That's the latest question to surface in the dispute between the city of Bayonne and city workers union AFSCME 52 Local 2261 since the stalled contract negotiations between the two sides went public at last week's City Council meeting.

Seth Gollin, attorney for the city workers union, told The Jersey Journal today that the city withdrew all of its contract offers in May, and that no offer has been made since then.

In response to City Business Administrator Joe DeMarco saying earlier this week that the city workers union has been offered a contract with the same terms as a contract that was settled with the city supervisors union, Gollin said it's not true.

"That hasn't been communicated to us," he said. "The last communication to us was that all offers had been withdrawn."

At last week's City Council meeting, DeMarco gave Gollin a rundown of the 5 ½-year contract the city had settled with the city supervisors union, without explicitly saying he was offering those same terms to city workers.

But DeMarco noted to Gollin at the time that he had no problem making himself available if Gollin wished to contact him. However, Gollin said today that the city hasn't given out all the details of that contract, and that it was never actually offered to the city workers union.

Gollin said DeMarco brought up the supervisors' contract to make the city workers "look unreasonable" by comparing them to another union that had quickly settled its contract.

When contacted right afterward, DeMarco repeated that the same offer is on the table. "I'm not going to play games," he said. "If they don't want to call, I can't make them call me."

The city workers union, which has roughly 240 members, hasn't had a new contract since their old contract expired last July. Negotiations between the union and the city have reached an impasse, and the state's Public Employment Relations Commission has assigned a mediator to resolve the dispute.

When asked what the union hasn't been happy about in negotiations so far, Gollin said it was mainly about wage increases and the timing of furlough payouts. However, he said he couldn't get into specifics.

An informal meeting will soon take place between the city workers union and the city's labor attorney, according to both Gollin and DeMarco.

Source: NJ.com