Mayor de Blasio wants to negotiate an unprecedented nine-year contract with the teachers union, according to sources.
The union has been operating under an expired contract since November 2009 and the length of such a new deal would assure de Blasio of labor peace with the teachers until after his likely re-election bid in 2017.
A 2018 expiration date would also deprive the United Federation of Teachers of leverage when it comes to endorsing a candidate in the next mayoral race.
“The reality is that no mayor would want to negotiate a contract in the middle of an election,” said a participant in talks between the UFT and the administration.
“Nine years seems enormous, but you have to remember that the last administration left us almost five years without a contract.”
Going forward, the contract sought by the administration would cover roughly four years — depending on when a deal is actually signed.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration was also seeking a lengthy deal — of seven years — before talks broke off last year, the source said.
The switch in administrations has altered not only the tone of talks, but some goals of a new contract.
Chancellor Carmen Farina is seeking to add instructional time to the school day, according to sources.
However, one UFT source said the proposed changes would not lengthen the school day, but make better use of the current schedule.
The administration is seeking a similarly lengthy deal with the 8,000-member New York State Nurses Association, which has been working under an expired contract since January 2010, sources said.
The nurses’ and teachers’ unions missed out on two years of consecutive raises — of 4 percent each — that nearly every other union got under the Bloomberg administration.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew has said he expects retroactive raises beyond the pattern established for those two years. That alone would cost the city $3.2 billion.
Retroactive pay for all 152 unions with open labor contracts ranges from an unlikely low of $500 million to a high of $7 billion, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.
And with budget deficits projected for the city as early as fiscal 2016 — even without factoring in the settlement of all the labor contracts — trimming health care costs has become a priority for the mayor.
The administration has told the UFT it “can’t do a deal without substantial savings in health care,” according to the participant in talks.
Asked about the talks, de Blasio declined to go into specifics, saying: “I said we have to find cost savings and that we can’t get where we need to go without cost savings.”
Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese