NYC Council blasts Mamdani in heated legal battle over $10K raises for school workers

Detailed summary

Paraprofessionals make as little as $32,000 a year for full-time work – and the profession has nearly 2,000 vacancies in Big Apple public schools.

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The City Council blasted Mayor Zohran Mamdani as Hizzoner fights lawmakers who bypassed the collective bargaining process to give teaching assistants $10,000 pay bumps outside of their contracts.

The council’s attorneys asked a Manhattan judge in Tuesday court papers to drop Mamdani’s lawsuit — saying if the mayor doesn’t like the giveaway, he should bake it into his own labor negotiations.

“The Mayor, who affirmatively chose to bring this lawsuit, does not get to litigate his case in an imaginary world bereft of legislative history that he dislikes,” the legal team said in a legal brief.

“Together, these indisputable facts demonstrate that this legal dispute and the underlying staffing crisis are the result of Plaintiff’s own conduct and could be resolved by Plaintiffs themselves without this Court’s intervention.”

Lawmakers said the extra dough was necessary to offset the paraprofessional staffing crisis with the economic relief payments.

Mamdani has said the council’s move in July to give out the extra cash illegally bypasses collective bargaining laws as it deals with the influential United Federation of Teachers Union, but the council shot back that the move was simply the result of City Hall’s “own conduct.”

Mamdani’s team argued in October papers that the payments — which would put the city out an estimated $325 million — constitute a pay increase outside of the union’s contract.

“Although the Council labels these ‘stabilization’ payments, they function as stipends or salary bonuses and, regardless of terminology, would provide eligible school paraprofessionals with an additional form of compensation for the current…

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