Owners ready to negotiate with unions.

Recalling the surprising 12-day strike by residential workers in 1991, apartment building and co-op owners are making sure they won't be fooled again when the contract ends at midnight on April 20th,

Many residents ended up as sanitation collectors and mail sorters as other union workers refused to cross the Local 32B-321 Service Employee's International Union picket lines. The local represents 30,000 doormen, porters, handipersons and superintendents working in 4,000 residential buildings around the city. Most superintendents are on a separate contract that expires June 20th and is based on what is negotiated for their brethren now.

The Realty Advisory Board (RAB) represents most of the buildings that are covered by the union contract. Its members, many of whom have been involved in years of negotiations, are elected by the membership, with proxies being cast primarily the managing agents on behalf of boards and owners. The 37-member board is split, with 18 people each from the commercial and residential sides, and one "swing" member. James Berg, executive vice president of the RAB, said for a building to have a doorman 24 hours, 7 days a week, it currently costs about $170,000. "Add to that the cost of porters and handyman and supers," he said. "Our goal is to be looking to reduce those cost factors and come up with the most reasonable deal we can."

According to a union spokesperson, Dennis Sheehan, the current salary for a handiperson at an "A" building is $567.73, while all other workers, including porters and doormen, receive $518.73 a week. A "B" building pays $565.42 a week in wages to handipersons and others received $516.42, while "C" buildings pay handipersons $563.11 a week in salary and others are paid $514.11. Benefits are also payable on top of that.

Mary Ann Roffiman, executive director of the Council of New York Cooperatives (CNYC), the city's largest co-op and condo group, said buildings need to be prepared if negotiations break down and a strike occurs. "These are hard times," she said, "because a lot of the people living in these buildings are hard pressed and would be deeply hurt if they had to dig deeply into their pockets."

Rothman, also a member of the negotiating committee, said the CNYC is asking its members to join a fax chain that will keep boards apprised of negotiations. "The RAB is going to work harder on communications," she added.

Booklets are available from the CNYC and the RAB outlining how best to prepare owners, boards and residents for the eventuality of a strike. Berg said "There is every expectation the parties will try as hard as they can before they put 30,000 people on the street and inconvenience millions of residents."

After a great deal of political maneuvering earlier this year, the RAB voted in co-op board president Rita Chu and apartment house owner Arnold Goldstein, who is president of Samson Management, as well as chairman of the Rent Stabilization Association board. They will be part of the negotiating team that will be chaired by D. Kenneth Patton, managing partner of PMC Management.

Rothman, who has been part of the residential negotiating team for several contracts, will also be a member of this year's group, while Patton is also a veteran of the last negotiations.

Said one individual pleased at Patton's new role in the upcoming negotiations, "He's very bright and he's put in three years thinking about it. He knows some things he would have done differently and knows the ways you get railroaded at 4 in the morning." Patton was on vacation and could not be reached for comment on the upcoming bargaining sessions.

Goldstein was upbeat about holding fast in the labor talks. "If the apartment owners are going to pay a labor increase, it's coming out of their pocket, just as it comes out of the pocket of the unit owners," he said. Individual owners are going to be fighting as hard as they can to keep expenses down, Goldstein added.

With these additional owner representatives, Goldstein noted, "The board now really represents the viewpoint of co-op, condo and apartment house owners, as opposed to managing agents. It should give comfort to the co-op owners.

Berg said "We're all now working toward the same goal. There is nobody here who wants to give more. They all want to give the least they can while being fair."

He is also not worried about the upcoming talks with the union that should begin before Passover. "This is a well lubricated process," Berg explained. "We have been bargaining for 60 years or so and the issues aren't so complicated."

Even as the deadline is only a month away, Berg said the most intensive aspects of the negotiations always takes place within the last several weeks. "It usually involves a solid week or more in a hotel in marathon sessions to cull out the maximum extent each side will go before a final deadline," he explained.

He expects to have at least two to four meetings before they retreat to a hotel. "The union will submit its proposals and then we will sit down and thrash it out and come to what we think is the best deal or not, or it could result in a strike," he added.

Ordinarily it's not the management side that ever calls the strike. "The union has a policy that if there is no contract they will go out on strike," said Berg.

Typically, although the contract is up at midnight, the parties will stop the clock and work through the night.

"If it gets to be four or five o'clock in the morning on April 20 and we have a framework to build a settlement," Berg continued, "We'll say, 'Let's put it over and get a good night's sleep.'" On the other hand, he added, "If you get to that final hour and there are many, many dollars apart and there doesn't seem to be any way to bridge that gap, most people don't want to put it over. I don't hope or think it will come to that."