(The Center Square) — New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is suing to block a new law giving paraprofessionals a $10,000 bonus, arguing that the taxpayer funded giveaway bypassed the city's collective bargaining process.
The RESPECT Check Act, approved by the Democratic-controlled City Council in July, will give New York City public school teaching assistants, instructional aides and other paraprofessionals who work under teachers a "workforce stabilization" bonus. It would provide quarterly payments of $2,500 to an estimated 26,000 paraprofessionals, at a cost to the city of about $325 million.
The bill, which passed with a veto-proof majority, became law on Wednesday without Mamdani's signature. Hours later the city's Law Department filed a legal challenge to block it from going into effect.
A Mamdani spokesman said the administration agrees that our professionals are among the lowest paid in New York City's public school system but said the bill sets a “dangerous precedent” that would allow “politicians to bypass workers and their unions and dictate the terms of employment themselves.”
"The City is filing a lawsuit to protect the right of every union to negotiate on behalf of its members," City Hall spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach said in a statement. "We will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table."
The lawsuit is the latest volley in an escalating fight between Mamdani and the City Council, who have clashed over the city budget and other issues since the new mayor was sworn into office in January.
In a joint statement, City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Council Member Carmen De La Rosa defended the bonuses and vowed to "vigorously" defend the law in court. They pointed out that paraprofessionals are among the lowest paid in NYC schools, with starting pay at $32,000 a year in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the nation.
"This law is not only the right thing to do, it is also the fiscally responsible thing to do," they said.
The New York City Central Labor Council and the United Federation of Teachers, both of whom backed the bill, fumed over the lawsuit and vowed an "all out war" against the Mamdani administration to uphold the new law.
"We are prepared to engage in a legal fight for the RESPECT check and the paraprofessionals who keep our schools running,” UFT officials wrote in an email Wednesday to its membership.
Mamdani supported a previous version of the legislation that would've authorized the payments as a recurring annual bonus, but the current law only authorized the payments for one year. The Mamdani administration says that it won't "solve the underlying, long-term pay inequities facing paraprofessionals."
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