Alejandro Sanchez lost his job five years ago when the building where he worked was sold to a new owner.
“I had been the super of the building for 18 years, but that didn”™t stop the new owner from replacing me with his family member the day he took over the building,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez is a member of 32BJ SEIU, a service workers union with 5,000 members in the Hudson Valley. According to a statement from the union, Sanchez and several more of its members urged the Westchester County Board of Legislators to support a proposed law that would give service workers a 60-day employment cushion in the event a building is sold or an owner switches contracts with an outside service company.
The board approved the legislation in a 16-1 vote Nov. 26, with the only dissenter Legislator Michael J. Smith, a small-government Republican whose district encompasses parts of Pleasantville and North Castle. Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino had not yet signed the bill into law as of press time, according to Donna Greene, a spokeswoman for the executive. If the executive were to veto the legislation, the board likely would have the 12 votes it needs to override the veto.
John Santos, Hudson Valley area leader and vice president of 32BJ praised the likely approval of the law in the union”™s statement. “Without the Displaced Worker Protection Act, property service workers in Westchester County were subject to a revolving door of employers who were free to lay them off with no notice,” he said.
The law would require that building owners keep existing service staff on the job for 60 days after a change in ownership and notify employees in advance if a service contract won”™t be renewed. Westchester already has a law in place preventing the displacement of service workers associated with county public contracts, but the new law addresses private service workers including security guards, custodians and other building maintenance.
The 60-day window will give workers a cushion to seek new jobs or prove their mettle to the new owner and potentially keep their old jobs, supporters say. The law also requires that new owners be given a list of existing service workers.
Legislator Bill Ryan, a White Plains Democrat, is chairman of the board”™s Legislation Committee. “We all know buildings can change hands, and that contractors come and go, but service workers should not be adversely affected by the changes,” he said.
The legislation received little opposition after emerging from the committee, according to Legislator Jim Maisano, a New Rochelle Republican and the board minority leader. Maisano said the original draft of the bill, which was unveiled during the summer, had a more aggressive “pro employee” stance. In that early draft, if after 60 days an employee had proven themselves a “satisfactory” employee, the new owner would be required to offer them continued employment.
“I don”™t think you could tell an employer who they should hire,” he said. “I don”™t know how you define ”˜satisfactory.”™ Your ”˜satisfactory”™ may be different than my ”˜satisfactory.”™”
Maisano”™s concerns over the original proposal were shared by some landlords and business organizations such as the Building and Realty Institute of Westchester and the Mid-Hudson Region. Another point of contention was the broad definition of buildings and businesses that would be affected by the law. Maisano and others lobbied to narrow the definition of the size of companies and buildings covered by the law, to exclude smaller “mom and pop” businesses.
“Over a six-month period, Democratic and Republican leadership worked through those thorny issues,” he said, saying that business groups withdrew their opposition at the toned down final draft of the bill.
Under the law as approved, locations affected are commercial office buildings and complexes of more than 100,000 square feet, multifamily residential buildings and complexes with more than 100 units, private schools, colleges, universities and institutions like museums, convention centers or performance halls.
The law”™s definition of service employees includes doormen and women, elevator operators and window cleaners along with cleaning service and security personnel. The employees covered under the law would have to be full-time or regular part-time employees with at least 90 days of employment prior to the transition. Owners would have to offer written notice of employment to existing employees under the new law and the employees would have five days from the notice to accept or decline the employment. If employers are found to have breached the law, they would be on the hook for back pay, the cost of lost benefits, damages and attorney fees.
For contracts about to be terminated, employers under the law would have 15 days prior to the end of the contract to request a list of employees, their hire dates and job titles. The employers would need to share the list with the next service provider, file written notice of the pending contract termination with any employees on staff and unions of which they are members.
The new law mirrors legislation in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, which has had a law for nearly a decade, according to Jeremy Bressler, Guardian Service Industries”™ vice president of operations for Connecticut/Westchester.
“Displaced worker protection has been very successful in helping responsible contractors like us remain competitive while providing fair ages and benefits to our employees without disruption to the industry,” he told the Board of Legislators during its public hearing on the legislation. “It has, in turn, smoothed transition and continuity of services to our clients.”
