New York officials on Thursday struck a tentative, nine-year contract agreement with the city's public school teachers worth around $4 billion through 2018 in a deal that could pave the way for settlement in a years-old dispute with the city workforce by the end of the financial year on June 30, according to the Associated Press.
The deal is a major coup for the city's new mayor Bill de Blasio, the AP reported. The contract dispute with over 300,000 city workers was seen as one of his greatest fiscal challenges with estimates for settling all retroactive demands as high as $7 billion.
Teachers have been working without a contract since 2009 and the agreement, which must be approved by union members, calls for raises of about 4 percent for 2009 and 2010, which would be paid out in increments from 2015 through 2020, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, according to the AP.
The contract would be retroactive to 2009 and was a "landmark" deal, de Blasio said, adding that it also contains a one-time, $1,000 ratification payment and additional salary hikes of 10 percent from 2013 through 2018, the AP reported.
The dispute with public sector workers is a legacy of previous mayor Michael Bloomberg, who imposed pay freezes on public workers in the years after the financial crisis, according to the AP. Unions rejected those pay freezes in the hope of a better deal after Bloomberg left office at the end of 2013.
The contract will expire after de Blasio runs for reelection and will fund merit pay for teachers and provides the city $1 billion in health care savings over the length of the deal, an important point among city negotiators wary of the budgetary strain caused by rising healthcare costs across the municipal labor force, the AP reported.
De Blasio noted that the agreement is being funded within the city's current budget framework and called it a victory for taxpayers, according to the AP.
"This agreement will be a gateway to great progress in our school system," De Blasio said at a news conference, the AP reported.
