Statement Available for Immediate Release
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The Courtlandt affordable housing developments and Phipps Houses are committed to providing a fair, supportive employment environment. From our founding as a non-profit to provide affordable housing, we believe in lifting up communities and the people that live there to have stable and fruitful lives.
We remain committed to negotiating terms of employment for the staff at Courtlandt Corners with the union organization they voted to represent them. We will not stand in the way of our staff’s right to bargain collectively. We completely repudiate any threats against employees and do not believe that they have been threatened in any way related to their membership in or desire to join a union. That claim is simply not true. In fact, we have many union work-sites, so this allegation makes no sense. Specifically at Courtlandt, the record shows that we made our neutrality transparently evident when the employees expressed their desire to join a union over a year ago.
We are disappointed with the recent efforts to mischaracterize our determination to do right by our workers. We have proposed to the union involved to provide wages, affordable health benefits, and leave policies comparable to other union locations we have; for that matter, we do that at any locations whether or not the workers have chosen to join a union. We will continue to advocate for individual staff to be able to control their retirement benefit plan and get more income from that plan in retirement than can be achieved under the union’s pension plan. We are also very concerned that the union’s pension plan has remained in the “red zone” for nearly a decade, which means affordable housing developments like the Courtlandts will have trouble funding these shortfalls in the future. Why not provide this benefit directly to the employee?
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For further comment please contact Thomas Brande at tbrande@phippsny.org.