The Realty Advisory Board and Local 32BJ averted a New Year’s Day strike involving more than 22,000 city office cleaners by agreeing to a new four-year contract, both sides announced last Friday following a tense standoff in New York.

The contract will increase wages by 5.6 percent and will include bonuses, according to an announcement posted on the Service Employees International Union official blog.

The agreement is set to be ratified during a final board vote today.

MetLife Building and Grand Central Station, both of which are regularly scrubbed by dues-paying members of 32BJ.

"The new contract is not just an important victory for office cleaners and their families, but for our economy and our city," said Hector Figueroa, Secretary-Treasurer of 32BJ in a statement yesterday.

"In these tough times the workers who keep New York City's corporate offices and landmark buildings clean and well maintained have stood up for the good middle class jobs our economy and our city needs."

Prior to the new contract, building owners of 1,500 office towers throughout New York City—including the Empire State Building and the Time Warner Center—were preparing themselves for a New Year’s strike.

Owners cited growing vacancy rates and diminished revenues behind their wishes to cut cleaners’ compensation packages—despite the city’s overall vacancy rate improving to 7 percent from 5.2 in 2007, according to The New York Times.

Members of 32BJ wanted a salary hike and employer-paid health coverage, which they will receive once the new contract is ratified.

“We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with the union that protects workers’ wages and benefits, and provides crucial cost-savings to building owners who have been battered in this deep recession,” said Howard Rothschild, president of the RAB, in a statement issued Monday.

Once ratified, the new agreement is set to expire on December 31, 2015.

Daniel Edward Rosen, Staff Writer, is reachable at DRosen@Observer.com.

The major bump up for Rivera comes right when Eliot Spitzer is about to (what's Hillary's phrase for this kind of thing?) drop the hammer on health care spending in New York, and, presumably, look for more federal aid to offset some of the costs. That's where Rivera, now an official national union leader, may have an impact.

In other words, they'll be speaking to each other in slightly different negotiating positions.

Official statement after the jump.

-- Azi Paybarah

1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
Politics & Legislation Department

For Immediate Release:
January 29, 2007

HEALTHCARE UNION LEADER DENNIS RIVERA ACCEPTS NEW POST
NY Champion of Workers and Quality Healthcare to Leave 1199SEIU to Chair New National Health Union

Will Lead National Effort For Quality Healthcare For All, and To Unite 10 Million U.S. Healthcare Workers

(New York, NY) -- Dennis Rivera, the creative leader of the nation's largest local union of healthcare workers, the New York-based 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, will leave that post this spring, following the Union's campaign to defend against the annual attempt to cut health services for New Yorkers in Albany, to become chair of SEIU Healthcare, a new national Union of nearly one million healthcare workers inside the Service Employees International Union, of which 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East will be the largest component. The Union will conduct its triennial election of Union officers in April, and Rivera will not be on the ballot for the first time since 1986.

Under Rivera's leadership, the Union has forged a partnership with management leaders of New York's hospitals, nursing homes and homecare agencies, that have successfully worked with both parties in New York's legislature to protect healthcare delivery in the state.

Rivera's move to the new national Union comes with the blessing and full support of the 1199SEIU leadership because of the importance of fixing the nation's broken health care system for patients and workers. The change is expected to be a smooth one. Rivera has been a leading force in SEIU's Healthcare Division for many years and has been a national leader in the political/legislative arena, especially in the effort to expand healthcare coverage to every American.

Under the Union Constitution, George Gresham, Secretary-Treasurer will assume the Presidency. "We expect a seamless transition," Rivera said. "George Gresham has been an 1199 leader in the effort to improve healthcare and workers' lives at every level for over 30 years. No one is more qualified to lead this dynamic organization."

For his part, Gresham said, "Of course we'll miss Dennis' day-to-day counsel, but he isn't going far. By building the national Union of healthcare workers, he will in fact be giving all of us additional strength. And as the biggest single unit in the new Union, we will be there to support him in his efforts."

The new national Union's goal is to unite the 10 million healthcare workers in America to stand up for quality care, comprehensive health care reform, and good jobs that support families and encourage people to pursue careers as nurses and other healthcare workers.

Kenneth E. Raske, President of Greater New York Hospital Association, and a long-time partner of Dennis Rivera through the 1199SEIU/GNYHA Healthcare Education Project said, "We extend our warmest congratulations to Dennis, a trusted ally on healthcare policy issues. We look forward to working with Dennis in his new role on both his continued active involvement in New York matters as well as on national healthcare issues of concern to GNYHA's member institutions, their patients, and their entire workforce."

"Dennis Rivera knows how to unite people to change lives and lift up communities," said SEIU President Andy Stern. "He has reached out to employers to create pioneering partnerships for change. He has reached out to other healthcare organizations and Unions, and he has worked with elected leaders of both parties to bring healthcare to millions and improve quality care in hospitals, nursing homes and homecare settings.

"Dennis is tough, smart, and compassionate, just what's needed to transform healthcare in this country," Stern said. "At this moment in history, as the winds of change are blowing toward fundamental healthcare reform, and as SEIU redoubles its efforts to fix our broken health care system, Dennis' decision to shift his focus to the national effort couldn't come at a better time."

****

"Another large union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 60,000 doormen, janitors and other workers, is expected to endorse him in the next few weeks, several union officials said."

Local 32BJ has quietly built itself into one of the four labor groups with a serious, large-scale political capacity, and brings with it at least one of the city's top Democratic operatives, Peter Colavito. Mike has courted the big local, which represents janitors and doormen, assiduously. He embraced their plan to train private security guards, and this seems to be his reward. (The other key unions are 1199, the teachers, the trades, the last of which is already with Mike.)

Also, per that old Bloomberg-becomes-Mark-Green story: If you were on the street during the 2001 election, you'll remember that 32BJ essentially was Mark Green's field operation.

"I've looked Howard Dean in the eye," says Ms. Schlicte, as the soft focus catches the flowers over her left shoulder. "I believe him when he says he's going to work for me."

Ms. Schlicte, with her earnest delivery and blond bangs, is pure Iowa. But the man who's making her a star is just as pure New York City. He's Dennis Rivera, the slim, dashing president of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union. The campaign to help win the heartland for Dr. Dean is being run out of a nondescript office in his towering green headquarters over the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and financed with more than $500,000 of his union's cash.

Mr. Rivera is well-known in New York political circles as one of the state's most powerful insiders, a man who brings voters and money to the table. Now, he is using his clout on behalf of a national candidate, and on a political battlefield far from home.

"He has shown on the state level that he can be a brilliant operative," said Fred Siegel, a New York–based senior fellow at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute. "He's now taking those skills and becoming a player on the national level."

Born in Puerto Rico to an Irish father and Puerto Rican mother, Mr. Rivera has been a fixture of the left since his days leading protests against the Vietnam War. Now he runs a union representing more than 237,000 health-care workers, and he has a deep interest in state and federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and other programs that help employ its members. Local 1199 is the biggest local in the fast-growing service employees' union, and it plays a central role in city and state politics. Last year, Mr. Rivera and his troops were crucial in pushing the Republican-controlled State Senate to override Governor Pataki's veto and pass a budget that maintained spending on health care and other services.

The union chief was an early supporter of Dr. Dean, telling his health-care workers that the Vermont doctor "is one of us." Union insiders say his support was crucial in pushing the powerful SEIU into endorsing Dr. Dean.

"The SEIU overall, including 1199, is going to make a tremendous effort in terms of the Presidential campaign," Mr. Rivera's top political aide, Jennifer Cunningham, told The Observer .

But unlike most local union leaders, Mr. Rivera isn't about to be overshadowed by the Washington-based union headquarters. He has taken the unusual step of pouring more than $500,000 into a state 1,000 miles away where the local has no members.

"Politically, they are head and shoulders above other locals," said Scott Levenson, a New York political consultant who often works with labor. "We shouldn't expect them to behave the same way."

The vehicle for 1199's investment in Howard Dean is a new political action committee called Take Back America SEIU. Its $1 million budget is financed half by Local 1199 and half by the main SEIU, according to union officials. Since the SEIU international draws some of its funding from the big New York local, 1199's members are bearing most of the cost of the campaign.

The $1 million commitment is more than a drop in the bucket. So far, Dr. Dean has bought $3 million in Iowa airtime out of a total of about $8 million in campaign advertising in that state, according to the Associated Press. The union is focusing on television advertising in Iowa, Ms. Cunningham says, because the SEIU is relatively thin on the ground in that state.

The operative directing the Iowa campaign is Patrick Brennan, a 28-year-old from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He has good connections in New York's political establishment-he ran Bill Mulrow's unsuccessful campaign for state comptroller in 2002, and his brother, Martin Brennan, is the state director for Senator Charles Schumer. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Brennan was unshaven and pressed for time. He had packed up his office at 1199's 42nd Street headquarters-the only decoration in the bare room seemed to be a small map of Iowa on the wall behind him-and was rushing to La Guardia Airport to catch a 7 p.m. flight to Chicago, with a connection to Des Moines.

Mr. Brennan's $1 million budget is particularly valuable because it's so-called hard money-coming in small sums from thousands of union members-so it's not subject to the tough restrictions on advertising in the weeks leading up to an election. He is, however, forbidden from coordinating his campaign with the official Dean effort or with the SEIU.

Take Back America isn't the only independent actor to hit the airwaves in Iowa as the new campaign-finance rules weaken national parties and channel political money through other groups. A group called Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values, financed by trade unions that support Representative Dick Gephardt, briefly aired a series of attacks on Dr. Dean which featured an image of Osama bin Laden and suggested that Dr. Dean is unfit to protect America from terrorism. The president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has also pledged to spend more than $1 million on "independent expenditures" for Dr. Dean.

On Jan. 7, the anti-tax Club for Growth will start airing its second attack on Dr. Dean: This one features a farmer and his wife railing against Dr. Dean's "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times –reading ... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show."

A Local With Clout

But Take Back America is unusual in that the driving force behind it isn't a national union or a Washington-based lobbying organization, but a single union local based in New York. The campaign's message is clear: Dr. Dean is the man to fix the country's health-care system. The television spots feature three nurses and an elderly man talking about prescription-drug costs and other issues. A series of mailings-labeled "Iowa Caucus Goers Survival kit"-has a kitschy touch, featuring an elderly couple climbing up steep rocks to reach two bottles of prescription drugs and, more obscurely, two doctors in surgical scrubs fishing knee-deep in a river. The committee is paying to send them to all 80,000 households expected to participate in the caucus.

It remains unclear how much impact the campaign will have in Iowa itself.

"Television advertising in this campaign isn't as important as it used to be," said Bruce Gronbeck, a professor of communications at the University of Iowa.

But the message that Mary Schlicte is sending is clear, and powerful, in what it says about Dennis Rivera and his union.

"[Local] 1199 has already established itself in the city and on the state level with the budget fight," Mr. Brennan said. "Now they're establishing themselves on a national level as well."