Opinion ID: 2118776
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Local Law 1 of 1972

Text: On December 29, 1971, the New York City Council Committee on Civil Service and Labor reported that the bill subsequently enacted as Local Law No. 1 (1972) of the City of New York, which was effective on January 12, 1972, was introduced at the request of the Office of Collective Bargaining and represents the joint and cooperative effort by the Municipal Labor Committee, The City of New York, and the Office of Collective Bargaining (2 Proceedings of Council of City of NY, from July 13, 1971 to Dec. 29, 1971, at 678). According to the Committee, the bill amend[ed] the [CBL] so that the law, as originally enacted by [the] Council in 1967, together with the amendments as set forth herein, is in substantial equivalence with ... `The Taylor Law'.[ [2] ] This action complies with the mandate of the Taylor Law. In addition, the amendments reflect the four years of experience of the OCB. The Taylor Law[,] enacted by the State Legislature in 1967, contained a `home rule' provision which authorized local public employers, through their legislative bodies, to adopt provisions and procedures concerning a labor relations program and policy affecting the employees of local public employers. It was pursuant to this home rule provision that the Council enacted Local Law 53-1967. In 1969, the State Legislature amended the Taylor Law requiring the Mayor ... to submit to the Legislature a report of the steps taken and a plan designed to bring the labor relations practices of The City of New York into substantial equivalence with the Taylor Law. This bill is based on the Mayor's report [to PERB and the Legislature] and constitutes the plan designed to bring the City's labor relations policies, including finality, into substantial equivalence with state law ( id. ). In sum, the Council ratified pursuant to Civil Service Law § 212 what the Mayor and the unions negotiated and what the State demanded from the Mayor to show substantial equivalence. As particularly relevant to this appeal, the Committee noted that the bill codified substantial portions of Executive Order 52 including the duty to bargain and [the] scope of bargaining, with appropriate representatives  ( id. [emphasis added]). In fact, Local Law 1 § 6 amended former section 1173-3.0 (m) of the Administrative Code to define the term matters within the scope of collective bargaining as matters specified in section 1173-4.3 of this chapter. This newly added section 1173-4.3 incorporated all the substantive provisions of section 5 of Executive Order 52 of 1967, which were grounded in the Agreement negotiated by the City and the unions in 1966. These provisions are now found in section 12-307 (a) (2) and (4) of the Administrative Code, which are at the heart of this appeal.