Dear COBA Members;

Today COBA, along with Nassau's other Labor Unions representing the entire Nassau County workforce engaged in a Mediation with the Blakeman Administration in an attempt to resolve the long outstanding Longevity issue. This Mediation was done at the request of the new County Executive, who expressed a desire to resolve this issue in a manner that would prevent a longer, even more drawn out Arbitration/Litigation process and in an attempt to gain the approval of NIFA, who continues to be in sole charge of the County's finances, since they took control in the year 2011.

As you all know, longevity has been frozen since the NIFA Wage Freeze was imposed in 2011. In the Fall of 2017 all of Nassau's Unions entered into an agreement with the County (Under Ed Mangano and Rob Walker) that Longevity would resume in January 2018 for all of our Members, many of whom had never received it. All Nassau County Employees ratified that deal with their respective Unions. Soon after, at the end of Mangano's Administration, that agreement was disputed by the new County Executive at the time, Laura Curran in the beginning of her term in 2018. We have been in litigation with the County since then over the terms of the 2017 agreement, and are poised to continue into an Arbitration and a continued longer litigation process over this issue.

Today's Mediation, contentious at times, lasted over 10 hours, beginning at 9am and breaking just after 7pm, yielded some progress but a final resolution was not reached. We have set an additional Mediation session for the end of next week.

Midway through today's proceeding, we were alerted to a Newsday story, in which County Executive Blakeman is alleged to have begun Mediation with Nassau's Unions in hopes of reaching agreement on new Labor contracts. (See that headline attached below.)

To be clear, today's Mediation was strictly for the purpose of attempting to reach an agreement on Longevity only. It had nothing to do with our respective outstanding labor contracts. This Newsday story was completely misleading.

There are obviously many irons in the fire right now for COBA and Nassau's other Unions, and we know that COBA's members are frazzled enough with false rumors about our pending contract. This misleading story from Newsday that the County Executive did not dispute by the way, does not help when it misrepresents what is actually going on.

Again, I ask for your patience as we continue to negotiate with the new County Administration, both a contract and the long outstanding Longevity issue that YOU will ultimately have the final decision and vote on.
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Stay focused and Always in Unity;

Brian Sullivan, COBA President