Menin pressures Mamdani to drop lawsuit blocking $10K payments to NYC teaching assistants

City Council Members are pressuring Mayor Zohran Mamdani to drop a city lawsuit blocking $10,000 checks for paraprofessionals – claiming they’ll drop the giveaway if Hizzoner comes to the bargaining table and opens the Big Apple’s checkbook. The council and Speaker Julie Menin filed a response to Mamdani’s Aug.19 lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday, saying the case should be thrown out.“We did not want to have to pass this bill,” said Menin of Local Law 129 – which would issue emergency “workforce stabilization ” checks to teaching assistants whose current starting salary is $32,000. The City Council unanimously passed Local Law 129 unanimously in July outside of the regular collective bargaining process with organized labor.

The Democrat-led council said it made the move because of 1,700 vacancies for paraprofessionals in the city.“We always wanted the administration to collectively bargain this or put it in the budget, but that didn’t happen, so we had to act, and that’s why we passed our bill,” Menin explained at a rally on the City Hall steps Thursday.The Mamdani administration filed a lawsuit against the bill hours after its passing – claiming it violated Taylor’s Law – a New York statute that gives public sector employees the right to organize and collectively bargain with their employers.“We will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table,” Mamdani said at the time of the lawsuit’s filing.Critics have said the move would set a bad precedent and water down labor negotiations, giving union members leverage to demand extra concessions after signing a contract.But Menin, joined by council members and paras, argued the bill doesn’t circumvent the collective bargaining process between the teachers union and the Department of Education – and blamed the administration for not moving forward with the bargaining process to begin with. “Our bill goes away if the administration colle...