Mayor Eric Adams and Sergeants Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong at the City Hall announcement Tuesday of a tentative 5-year unit agreement with the union. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is at right.
ED REED/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2025 8:05 pm

BY RICHARD KHAVKINE

After nearly two years of hard bargaining, the union representing NYPD sergeants and the city have chiseled a tentative contract agreement.

The retroactive 5-year deal, which will be put to a vote of the Sergeants Benevolent Association’s rank and file in the coming days, would net sergeants who were in the rank December 2021 and who work through Dec. 9 a compounded raise of nearly 19 percent.

Notably, though, and for the first time in years, all of the department’s roughly 4,400 sergeants will be earning more than the officers they supervise. And those sergeants who earned below top pay as of Dec. 10 will be bumped to the maximum salary of $134,819 as of that date. The deal, if approved, will also remedy a pay disparity that had about 1,200 sergeants with years in the supervisory title earning less than those newly promoted into the rank.

Noting the time it took to reach the agreement, the SBA’s president, Vincent Vallelong, said it had “a lot of moving parts.”

“Contracts that get done very fast usually turn out to be bad contracts,” he said at Tuesday afternoon’s City Hall announcement. “And we took our time with this and we made sure that this was going to be … in the best interests for the men and women sergeants of the NYPD. I mean, that’s what we do here. We are here to represent them and their families and make sure that they have the means to take care of their families at home.”

Although the two sides had essentially come to terms in recent weeks, an imminent deal was scrapped when, according to the union, city officials called for the inclusion of a pilot program that would have some sergeants on 12-hour tours in exchange for extra days off as a condition to settle outstanding contract issues.

Vallelong went on the offensive, saying the proposal to have his members, whom he said are already overburdened given the department’s declining number of cops, work the longer shifts would risk further burnout and also risk their health and safety. “We’re basically running it on fumes because there is nowhere near enough manpower to fill something like this,” he said as recently as last week.

On Tuesday, the union leader credited Mayor Eric Adams for keeping a promise made during his State of the City address at the Apollo Theater in mid-January, just minutes following the conclusion of a nearby rally by SBA members demanding a resolution to their pay issue, that he would produce an agreement with the sergeants union.

Adams in turn praised Vallelong for advocating for the sergeants. “You knew what your members wanted,” the retired NYPD captain said at the announcement. “You were directly engaged, involved. We sat down several times and just a number of people out there that just wanted to see this plane landed for the SBA.”

12-hour tour pilot on deck

But separate from the pact reached this week, another agreement outlines what the city’s labor commissioner, Renee Campion, said was a strictly voluntary pilot involving 50 sergeants signing up for 12-hour tours. The volunteer component, she said, was key to reaching the overall deal.

“That was the number-one thing that was very important to the union,” she said, adding that “50 is a pretty small number and I would think probably a better chance than not that we’ll have all volunteers as a result.”

The pilot, similar to that involving about 3,000 officers rolled out in May 2023 following the Police Benevolent Association rank and file’s ratification of their contract, would have some sergeants work either three successive 12-hour tours followed by three days off; three 12-hour tours followed by four days off; or four 12-hour tours followed by three days off.

Vallelong said discussions with the mayor’s representatives meant to break the deadlock began in earnest last week, with the deputy mayor for public safety, Kaz Daughtry, among those most involved in the talks. Vallelong said Daughtry, himself a longtime NYPD officer, was “instrumental” in getting the deal to the finish line.

The agreement then began to take shape over the weekend and was essentially sealed shortly after a chance meeting between Vallelong and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch at the Midtown Hilton on Palm Sunday. “Vinnie, can we get this done?” Tisch said she asked Vallelong.

“Not 10 minutes later, as if he knew what had just happened, the mayor texted me, ‘How are we doing getting my sergeants paid?’ And to Vinnie’s great credit, the deal was essentially sealed that afternoon,” the commissioner said.

The agreement was then unanimously and enthusiastically approved by the union’s 162 delegates and signed by Vallelong Monday. “We busted our ass on this,” the union leader said Tuesday evening. The rank and file will receive copies of the agreement Thursday and Friday with a vote conducted shortly afterward.

According to the deal’s financial terms, sergeants in the rank at the time will get retroactive raises of 3.25 percent backdated to Dec. 10, 2021, and Dec. 10, 2022; of 3.50 percent backdated to Dec. 10, 2023 and Dec. 10, 2024; and a final bump of 4 percent next Dec. 10. The agreement’s cost through Fiscal Year 2029 is estimated at $1.02 billion, and is fully funded in the city’s financial plan, city officials said.

Regardless, the department could be facing a significant exodus of cops in the supervisory title. While the NYPD counted 4,398 sergeants as of April 3, that figure could be greatly reduced in the coming months, Vallelong said.

About 150 of his members had retired since January, he said, and 75 more had filed for retirement as of last week. Another 900 sergeants are eligible to leave through June who Vallelong said would be foolish not to retire from the department since their pensions would be “drastically reduced” if they stayed on the job, he said.

On Tuesday, though, Vallelong had reason to be reassured. “I wish it would have been a little bit sooner,” he said of the agreement. “But I mean, we’re where we need to be right now.”