Anger in the Big Apple : Once-Genteel Strike by N.Y. Co-op Buildings’ Staffs Gets Ugly

It began as one of the more genteel labor disputes this fractious city has witnessed. Many striking doormen, porters, elevator operators and handymen were even treated to coffee and sweet rolls by apartment dwellers who were often their employers.

“We’re all in this together,” became the credo among the inconvenienced residents of the 1,500 struck buildings. Actress Susan Sarandon and TV anchorman Peter Jennings demonstrated their solidarity by joining their fellow residents in volunteering to watch the door and run the elevator.

But 11 days into the walkout and with no end in sight, New York appears to be returning to form. Strikers roughed up a private guard for operating an elevator at one Upper West Side building last week. Not far away, residents of another building returned the favor, pelting striking workers who were playing whiffle ball in front of the building with garbage and epithets.

Such ugly incidents may proliferate if, as owners fear, the union begins rotating picketers around the city to buildings where they are neither known nor employed.

“As the strike wears on and the buildings start looking like tenements, more anger is surfacing,” real estate attorney Richard E. Feldman said. “A lot of residents who think of their doormen as members of the family are feeling betrayed.”

The feeling is mutual. “The building owners say their costs are going up. Well, our cost of living is going up too,” said a striking member of the Service Employees International Union, Local 32B-32J. “All we want is a living wage.”

The union is seeking a three-year contract that would give its members wage increases of 6.4% the first year, 6% the second and 7% the third. The Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, which represents building owners, has proposed a wage hike of 3.5% a year for three years.

Lurking in the background is this city’s deep recession, which has wiped out 100,000 jobs in the private sector and decimated real estate values. The strike has slowed the economy even further as furniture deliverers and tradespeople refuse to cross picket lines.

The hard times are making some owners take a hard line. “Real estate taxes are up 20%, water rates are up 20%--there has got to be a limit,” co-op owner and former Mayor Edward I. Koch said.

Koch’s offer to serve shifts as a doorman at his Greenwich Village building was politely declined by the building’s co-op board. “The union was going to use my being at the door for demonstration purposes,” Koch said. “When the board heard about it, they said, ‘Don’t call us; we’ll call you.’ ”

Many residents who are volunteering to keep their buildings running are far more ambivalent about their roles. “You step into it because there are old people in the building who have no other way to get up and down,” said Robert Sullivan, a staff writer at Sports Illustrated who has spent hours running the elevator in his lower 5th Avenue co-op building.

“Then you begin to agonize when you realize you’re a union man and are scabbing,” added Sullivan, a member of the Newspaper Guild. “It’s such a strange strike. Your best friends in the building are often the ones who are out on the picket line.”

Of course, not all apartment dwellers think of their doormen as friends. “It depends on where you live,” said Chelsea Realtor Gil Neary. “Downtown, you tend to think of your doormen as the guys who sits in the lobby and are your comrades. Uptown, people think of them as servants.”

Similarly, residents and staffs tend to bond more closely in small buildings. At a Greenwich Village co-op, for example, a striking handyman was happy to share his expertise with residents puzzling over a leak that developed in the laundry room.

Still, even as a downtowner, Neary couldn’t resist getting in a dig at his striking doormen. “The irony of this strike is that they’re working more now on the picket line than they ever did,” he said.

Besides volunteering to help out in their buildings, New Yorkers are adjusting. In the Greenwich Village building where Sarandon has been staffing the elevator, “people are coming home earlier” because the elevator has been left without an operator between midnight and 7 a.m., co-op board President Sandy Baum said.

Stories of minor and major inconvenience abound. “It’s a pain,” said media consultant David Corkery. “I had to go 20 blocks to pick up a package from Federal Express. I can’t get my laundry delivered. Enough already.”

Bill McClaren, an administrator with International Creative Management, was forced to move into a new apartment last week “with only my futon, my cat and my plants,” and even that required special dispensation from the building’s management, which has barred all moves for the strike’s duration.

“I don’t have my bed, my clothes my dishes,” he complained. “I don’t have a TV, a book or a radio.”

Of course, inconvenience is a relative thing. John Paul Giacalone, an attorney who is coordinating the volunteer effort at the posh Central Park West building that was featured in “Ghost Busters,” called for volunteers at a meeting and was surprised when a frail woman of at least 90 years old approached him afterward.

“I thought she was going to ask for help carrying down her garbage, but she said she wanted to volunteer,” Giacalone recalled. “And then she proceeded to volunteer her cook, her driver and her chambermaid.”

KEY POINTS IN STRIKE Buildings struck: 1,500 cooperative, condominium and rental buildings

Buildings that have settled: Union claims 300; management says 100

Number of workers striking: 15,000 porters, doormen, elevator operators and handymen

Date strike began: April 21

Current weekly salaries: for doormen, porters, elevator operators: $463; for handymen: $503

Sources: Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations; Service Employees International Union, Local 32B-32J