The Taylor Law and Triborough Doctrine

Protects Your Benefits

 When You Exercise Your Right to Change Unions

 When you change unions, you cannot lose any benefits.  The Taylor Law and the Triborough Doctrine protect your wages, benefits, as well as terms and conditions of employment.

It is an improper employer practice not to continue an expired agreement until a new agreement is reached (Section 209 - a.1):

§209   Civil Service Law       Art. 14

 §209-a.         Improper employer practices; improper employee organization practices; application

 Improper employer practices.  It shall be an improper practice for a public employer or its agents deliberately (a) to interfere with, restrain or coerce public employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed in section two hundred two for purpose of depriving them such rights; (b) to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any employee organization for the purpose of depriving them of such rights; (c) to discriminate against any employee for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership in, or participation in the activities of, any employee organization; (d) to refuse to negotiate in good faith with the duly recognized or certified representatives of its public employees; or (e) to refuse to continue all the terms of an expired agreement until a new agreement is negotiated, unless the employee organization which is a party to such agreement has, during such negotiations or prior to such resolution of such negotiations, engaged in conduct violative of subdivision one of section two hundred ten of this article.

 Article V, Section 7 of the New York State Constitution guarantees that your retirement benefits are secure:

    [Membership in retirement systems; benefits not to be diminished nor impaired.]  § 7.  After July first, nineteen hundred forty, membership in any pension or retirement system of the state or of a civil division thereof shall be a contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.  (New Adopted by Constitutional   Convention of 1938 and approved by vote of the people November 8, 1938.)