NYC PBA Prez Patrick Lynch: Sharpest Thorn In de Blasio’s Side
Important article to read to get a better understanding of Pat Lynch, who runs the nation’s largest police union – 24,000 members. Click on “Read more” link below for the whole story.
Here are some excerpts from the story by Bloomberg News reporter Martin Z. Braun:
Under Lynch’s leadership, the PBA won the right to take the city to binding arbitration, breaking a pattern of settling for terms similar to those negotiated with other unions. He negotiated a four-year contract from 2006 to 2010 that won police offers an additional 17 percent increase, according to the PBA, which has 24,000 members.
“He always conducted himself like a gentleman, really did, no table pounding, no cussing, none of that kind of stuff,” said James Hanley, the city’s former chief labor negotiator.
During Lynch’s tenure, officers’ salaries have gone up 55 percent on a compounded basis, according to the PBA. Even so, their hourly pay is still 67 percent less than officers in Long Island’s Nassau County and about 43 percent below the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey police, according to a 2012 study by the Citizens Budget Commission.
“There’s enormous anger because the cops have been painted into a corner,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, and a former NYPD officer and prosecutor. “The language he picked can’t artfully describe the anger and the angst cops feel as they’ve repeatedly had their job and their profession misrepresented without anybody rebutting it.”