NEW YORK CITY-Non-profit organization the Metropolitan Movers Association, Inc., along with East Side Movers Inc. and Universal Moving & Storage Co., has filed a notice of petition against New York City Comptroller John C. Liu challenging the city’s prevailing wage schedule that took effect on July 1, arguing that the schedule violates statutory Section 230 of the New York Labor Law and a previous March 2011 opinion by New York Supreme Court Justice Alice Schlesinger. The previous decision--Metropolitan Movers Association Inc. v. Liu--said that the Comptroller’s office set aside its use of Local 814 of the International Brotherhood of Teamster’s collective bargaining agreement as the basis for the city’s prevailing wage for moving and storage work, according the petition.
But in a notice of petition dated July 5, the petitioners say that the Comptroller “has brazenly defied this court’s recent instructions on how prevailing wages must be set,” citing that Liu’s office re-adopted the Local 814 collective bargaining agreement that was in effect in June 2010 “without determining whether moving employees generally receive such wages today,” according to the petition.
In response, a spokesman for the City Comptroller’s office told GlobeSt.com that as of the morning of Friday July 8, they had not received a complaint from the MMA. Based on the current “lack of paperwork,” the comptroller’s office declined to comment about the matter, but said “the rates that are published this year starting July 1 reflect the identical rates for 2009,” noting they are lower and include casuals. Those are defined as workers who worked less than 600 hours the prior year calendar, receiving a rate of $12 per hour.
The Comptroller has noticed an appeal of Metropolitan Movers Association Inc. v. Liu decision, but “he has not been excused from complying with New York Labor Law or the declarations or precedents of this Court,” the petition says.
And while the MMA explains that the Comptroller’s new schedule sets a lower prevailing wage rate for some types of moving industry employees, the petition says “the wages and benefits that the Comptroller insists be paid to the bulk of the workers in the moving industry, when engaged in city contract work, are more than twice the rates that prevail in the moving industry.” In addition, the Court determined that the Comptroller “must not simply adopt collectively-bargained wages as ‘prevailing wage’ under Section 230 of the Labor Law,” according to the petition.
Robert Koncelik, Jr., president of the MMA and owner of Universal Moving & Storage, tells GlobeSt.com that the city’s labor rates are disproportionate compared to the market labor rates set by the private sector, as well as federal government rates set forth under the McNamara-O’Hara Act. It was also included in a Memorandum of Law dated September 27, 2010.
Under the US Department of Labor’s prevailing wage schedule for moving and storage federal contracts for New York City and suburban Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, as of June 2010, prevailing wages range from $12.40 an hour for material handling and up to $16.64 for a tractor-trailer truckdriver, respectively, according to the memorandum.
And according to public records on the New York City Comptroller website, a furniture mover is paid a wage of $22.70 per hour, while a casual furniture mover is paid $12 an hour, respectively.
While the wage scale softens the impact of the Comptroller’s reliance on Local 814’s collective bargaining agreement, the petition says “the wage and benefit rates that the Comptroller has set for the bulk of the workers-$37.34 for drivers and $35.57--are still twice as high as the wage and benefit rates that actually prevail in the moving industry.”
Seeking relief, the MMA is calling for the city’s prevailing wages to be set aside and revamped to reflect current market conditions. “While we’re pleased that our court victory has forced the Comptroller to adopt rational minimums for casual employees, the Comptroller’s minimum wage for regular employees is still more than twice that of the wage that’s actually prevailing in the industry,” he says, in a prepared statement.
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