Mayor Eric Adams on Friday announced a tentative $400 million 5-year labor contract with the Uniformed Sanitation Workers’ Union Local 831, marking the completion of deals with 90% of the city’s unionized workforce.
The tentative agreement would cover 7,100 city Department of Sanitation (DSNY) workers and is retroactive — running from last December to Feb. 2028. It includes raises starting at 3.25% and increasing to 4% by 2026, following the uniform union bargaining pattern set by the city’s contract with the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) earlier this year.
The not-yet-ratified agreement also promises to increase sanitation employees’ base pay to $99,129-a-year and includes a fund to boost their starting salaries to nearly $50,000 annually by the end of the contract term. Additionally, it includes one week of full paid parental leave for non-birth parents.
While unveiling the tentative agreement at a City Hall press conference on Friday, Hizzoner spoke to sanitation employees’ vital role in keeping the city running.
“When you look at the top things that are important to the city, it’s about cleanliness, it’s about being able to remove snow during the winter time, it’s about making sure that when you have some major natural disaster, to recover rapidly,” Adams said. “This is what they’ve done for not only the time that I’ve been in office, but throughout the time in this city.”
The starting pay increases and parental leave benefits included in the deal are aimed at helping the city attract and retain employees as it faces mounting staffing shortages, Adams said.
“We’re hemorrhaging city servants and we must be competitive and attractive enough that people want to go into the professions that we have,” the mayor said. “This agreement will provide new paid parental leave benefits that support retention, holding on to our employees.”
DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the agreement reflects new changes and responsibilities her department has taken on over the past year in accordance with new mandates from the administration. Those include changing trash set-out times from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., rolling out trash containerization, expanding the city’s new curbside composting program and cleaning highways.
Furthermore, Tisch said, the contract also adjusts the currently separate tonnage targets for the collection of refuse and recyclables into one “fair” target.
Uniformed Sanitation Workers’ Union President Harry Nespoli said the contact was a result of sanitation workers being included in the negotiations.
“This mayor here turned around and listened to how we got things done,” Nespoli said. “What they did was they included the person that comes to work every single day and loads the truck and cleans the streets and does the work.”
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