Tentative contract deal holds off strike by New York City apartment building workers

NEW YORK (AP) — Union leaders representing thousands of New York City apartment house doorpersons, superintendents and other workers said Friday that they had reached a tentative contract agreement with building owners, averting a strike at the homes of an estimated 1.5 million people.

The deal came just days before nearly 34,000 workers’ contract with an array of private building owners would have expired at midnight Monday.

The union, called 32BJ SEIU, hadn’t called a strike in 35 years. Some tenants, co-op owners and condo dwellers across the city had been bracing to haul trash to the curb, postpone renovations and major deliveries, limit visitors and volunteer to staff lobby doors, sort packages and mop hallways.

Specific provisions of the deal weren’t immediately available. The union president and a leader of the umbrella group representing building owners, called the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, planned a news conference Friday afternoon.

The tentative contract will head to union members for a vote.

Negotiations had grown tense in recent days. The union bristled at building owners’ proposals to have employees start paying health insurance premiums and to create a new job classification for future hires. The union said the newcomers would be lower-paid.

Workers also sought to boost wages and pensions, saying it is tough to pay New York-area bills on wages that average about $62,000 a year for a doorperson, with varying averages for the other jobs. Meanwhile, workers noted, employers have collected sharply rising rents in recent years for market-rate apartments, especially in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The Realty Advisory Board said the union was being unrealistic at a time when owners’ costs also are rising and landlords face a potential rent freeze on 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. The idea has been championed by new Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat who joined the workers Wednesday at a huge rally where they authorized a potential strike.

The union’s last strike, in 1991, lasted 12 days.