New York City apartment building workers set to vote on whether to go on strike

NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New York City apartment building doorpersons, superintendents and other workers were set to vote Wednesday on whether to walk off the job in the coming days, after contract negotiations snagged over issues including health care and pensions.

A strike would be the first in 35 years and would affect 1.5 million renters, co-op owners and condo dwellers across the city, according to the workers' union, called 32BJ SEIU. Residents could have to take on such tasks as staffing doors, sorting packages, mopping hallways, sweeping sidewalks and hauling trash to the curb.

If a strike is authorized, it could start as soon as midnight Monday, when the current contract expires.

The union says building owners are trying to squeeze 34,000 workers who already are struggling to afford the pricey metro area on salaries that average about $62,000 a year for doorpersons; averages vary for other jobs. Building owners, represented by an umbrella group called the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, want the workers to start paying health insurance premiums and want new hires to come in under a new job classification that the union says would be lower-paying.

Union President Manny Pastreich said the owners' association "wants to cut costs on the backs of workers.”

“We won't allow it!” he added in a statement ahead of a planned rally and vote Wednesday afternoon. Pastreich emphasized that the city “is becoming more unaffordable for working people every day,” even as building owners have hiked rents in recent years — at least for market-rate apartments, in Manhattan especially.

While battling owners’ health care and new-hires proposals, the union is pushing to increase pensions and increase wages, although it has yet to make an exact proposal on pay.

The Realty Advisory Board says building owners are facing a squeeze themselves, particularly in light of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's push to freeze rent on the city's roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. The board notes that few U.S. workers enjoy health benefits without paying premiums.

“Without meaningful movement to address costs ... the long-term sustainability of the industry and its workforce is at risk," board President Howard Rothschild said in a statement. He called for negotiating "a contract that reflects these realities and supports a viable path forward.”

Mamdani and other elected Democrats were expected to join the union's demonstration Wednesday on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, home to a classic stretch of tony apartment buildings that boast doorpersons — many New Yorkers still call the mostly male workers “doormen” — and other staffers.

While “doorman” might conjure a white-gloved fellow ceremoniously opening an ornate door, the job often involves other functions (and uniforms aren't always quite so formal). Besides providing basic security in buildings that can have hundreds of residents, doorpersons field package and food deliveries that have mushroomed since the COVID-19 pandemic and help people with strollers and walkers navigate lobby stairs. In some buildings, the workers also clean, shovel snowy sidewalks and wrestle bins of refuse out of basements and alleys for pickup.

Superintendents, meanwhile, oversee maintenance and repairs in buildings that may be a more than a century old.

Some building managers already have told residents they may need to postpone renovations, moves and major deliveries and minimize deliveries and visitors, among other steps, if there is a strike.

The union's last strike, in 1991, lasted 12 days. Over the years since then, the union has at times voted to authorize a strike but then reached contract deals.