New York, NY – The Bloomberg administration said that it would scale back a plan to demote 100 sanitation supervisors after an independent arbitrator ruled that the workers would lose their seniority standing.
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The demotions had been championed as a way of improving efficiency at the Sanitation Department by moving more workers to the front lines for trash and snow duty. The city had argued that despite the change in title, the demoted workers should be able to retain the seniority they had accrued as employees of the department.
But in a decision last week, Bonnie Siber Weinstock, the arbitrator, called the city’s interpretation inaccurate. Citing labor agreements, she said the workers would lose their seniority standing once when they were demoted.
As a result, the city has decided to keep 55 supervisors in place. The ruling does not apply to the other 45 supervisors who were too new to their positions to be at risk of losing seniority.
“We recognize that the supervisors worked hard to attain their seniority,” said Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “We don’t feel it would be fair to strip them of it.”