Mayor Zohran Mamdani sued the New York City Council on Aug. 19, attempting to protect preexisting labor laws. The suit came after a City Council bill was passed that would grant teaching assistants, also known as paraprofessionals, a $10,000 bonus in 2027.
Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for the mayor, said that the bill undermines the city’s collective bargaining process, which allows workers represented by their unions to negotiate wages and terms as a group under Taylor Law and the NYC Collective Bargaining Law.
According to The New York Times, Mamdani supported the bonuses during his campaign but opposed them once he became mayor, calling the bill illegal. According to the United Federation of Teachers—the union representing paraprofessionals—the mayor did not sign or veto the bill within the 30-day review period, allowing it to automatically pass on Aug. 19.
The bill, called the RESPECT Check Act, was unanimously passed by the Council on July 16 with the support of the United Federation of Teachers. Around 26,000 teachers were expected to receive the first of four payouts on Jan. 1.
If the mayor decided to veto the bill, the Council could have easily overridden the decision with a two-thirds vote. Since this decision would have resulted in the Council’s victory, the mayor decided to take no action during the window period and file a lawsuit.
Rauschenbach also said that the administration wants to “permanently address this inequality,” raising their pay through other means to “protect the right of every union to negotiate on behalf of its members, and ensure that workers – not politicians – determine their own futures.”
Full-time paraprofessionals are one of the lowest-paid workers in the NYC public school system, receiving roughly $32,000 per year with a top pay of about $56,000 annually. They provide support to teachers and usually work in special education and early childhood education settings, and the bill aimed to properly compensate them for the work that they do in supporting special needs children in the classroom.
“I laugh at their arguments. We crafted the bill specifically to deal with the fact that they’re trying to hide behind collective-bargaining patterns to screw over their own workers,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the UFT, said in an interview. He added that the union would help defend the measure in court and that the administration was just trying to buy time.
Following the lawsuit, many elected officials and organizations have already expressed either their agreement or opposition to Mamdani’s decision.
Those in support of the City Council bill include NYC Council Member Tiffany Cabán of Queens District 22, Council Member Frank Morano of Staten Island’s District 51 and the Legal Aid Society, who issued a statement after the lawsuit, expressing their full support of the Council’s efforts.
Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, positioned herself on the side of the mayor, agreeing that the bill undermines the collective bargaining process.
The New York Post’s editorial board also expressed their support toward the mayor’s decision in an article published on Aug. 20.
