Thousands of doormen, superintendents and other apartment building workers in New York City will vote on Wednesday whether to authorize a strike if their union cannot reach a deal with building owners in coming days, a possibility that could leave residents to haul their own garbage and sort their own mail.
It would be the first strike by the workers, an essential part of the city’s economy and culture, in more than three decades.
The workers, members of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, are demanding pay increases that would keep up with the rising costs of living in the city. Their union would not disclose the size of the raises it is seeking because it has not begun bargaining on pay matters. But the union says that the owners of the buildings want to pay new employees less and to shift some health care costs onto all the workers.
Several more bargaining sessions are scheduled before the current contract expires on Monday, but the two sides said that they were far from agreement on critical issues, including pay. The negotiations highlight the growing divide between tenants of some of New York City’s most luxurious high-rise buildings and the uniformed laborers who protect and maintain them, as well as take out trash and take in laundry and food deliveries.
“The relationship our members have with the tenants is deep,” Manny Pastreich, the union’s president, said. “They keep the buildings safe, shovel during storms. They often see the tenants’ children go from birth to college.”
The roughly 34,000 residential building workers who belong to the union include doormen (who still are mostly male), porters, superintendents and managers in buildings where rents can run well above $5,000 a month. But many of those workers are struggling to support families on salaries of about $60,000 a year, Mr. Pastreich said.
The building owners, who are represented in the negotiations by the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, say they, too, are squeezed by inflation and must contend with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to freeze rents for about one million rent-stabilized apartments.
The RAB says that the building workers are among a small minority of employees in the United States who pay nothing toward their health insurance. The owners estimate that the cost of providing health care and other benefits amounts to about $50,000 a year per employee.
Howard Rothschild, chief executive of the board, said in a statement that its members “remain committed to negotiating a fair contract that reflects the mounting pressures facing the industry, including the likelihood of zero percent rent increases on stabilized units for years to come, increasing regulatory burdens and rising operating costs.”
In past years, bargaining sessions between the advisory board and 32BJ have dragged on, with strikes averted by agreements forged in the final hours before a contract was set to expire. In 2022, a deal was reached one day before a threatened strike. The last time the unionized building workers walked off their jobs was 35 years ago, in 1991, when a strike lasted 12 days.
Despite a long history of deals being reached at the last minute, building owners and managers have been preparing tenants across the city to share in the daily duties that the workers perform.
At a building in the Inwood section of Upper Manhattan, residents were informed that they would have to tote their trash to ground-floor bins and that volunteers would be required to haul the garbage to the curb between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. three days a week. They also were warned that deliveries might be limited to emergencies, and that no one could move into or out of apartments during a strike.
“We respect 32BJ’s right to strike,” Mr. Rothschild said. “Our members are preparing for that possibility and taking prudent steps to ensure continuity of building operations, including hiring security.”
Mr. Pastreich, the union president, said that he could not predict whether an agreement could be reached before a walkout next week. “The tension of last days helps,” he said. “That’s when everyone focuses.”
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
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