A tentative agreement has been reached between the Great Neck Library Staff Association and the library’s board of trustees on a new contract, according to board President Weihua Yan
Yan declined to go into specifics but confirmed reports to Blank Slate Media that significant progress was made yesterday between the board and the library staff association.
“It does take some time to work through the process with the attorneys on both sides,” Yan said Wednesday morning. “I am pleased to announce that both sides have reached a tentative settlement to honor our original contract.”
According to library staff association President Barbara Buckley, the union has been operating without a contract since the expiration of a previous agreement with the Great Neck Library in 2012. Both parties signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018.
A stipulation in the memorandum of understanding stated each library employee will receive a 2 percent raise every year beginning in 2018 and ending in 2021.
Buckley said after two pay periods had passed since the collective bargaining agreement negotiations in 2018, six senior members of the library staff were informed by the board that their salaries “hit the cap” and would remain at their current level.
“That was really the first time the staff got infuriated by the board,” Buckley said. “Every one of the staff members that received a notification that their salaries hit the cap have been at the library for 20 years or more.”
Buckley said library staff members receive bonuses after 10, 15, and 20 years of employment.
The library staff association then filed a grievance and hired an arbitrator to negotiate the compensation of those six employees from the expired collective bargaining agreement, according to Buckley.
The union argued that the pay raises negotiated in the memorandum of understanding were not subject to the salary caps cited by the library board.
The library board argued that it corrected the payments that exceeded the salary cap, which the memorandum of understanding had no control over as it was not mentioned in the document, according to Buckley.
She said the board and the union have in the past honored the collective bargain agreement, which contains a clause ruling in favor of the memorandum of understanding if both the collective bargaining agreement and memorandum of understanding conflicted with each other.
The memorandum of understanding made no exceptions for pay raises, so the arbitration became a matter of discrepancies in the contract’s language, Buckley said.
New York State Public Employment Relations Board arbitrator Howard C. Edelman was brought in to assist in the negotiations, ultimately siding with the union for the board to restore the affected employees’ salaries.
Peter Fishbein of Bee Ready Fishbein Hatter & Donovan LLP, represented the board in the arbitration process.
The collective bargaining agreement between the board and union allows the board to challenge an arbitrator’s ruling of any grievance, according to Buckley.
The board ultimately has the final authority over any grievance and can rule to sustain or overturn the arbitrator’s recommendation by majority vote.
Buckley, knowing the union is not permitted to strike, said she turned to library patrons and community groups to help spread the word of the union’s issues.
“It got to a point where we all reached out to community groups and library patrons and told them what the issue was,” Buckley said in a phone interview with Blank Slate Media. “I’m just happy that the board recognized where we were coming from and cleared this up.”
Yan touted the work of the library staff and was pleased a tentative settlement was reached.
“The library board and all of our patrons appreciate the work of our staff,” Yan said. “It does not go unnoticed and they are extremely valued by all.”
