By the time most Park Avenue residents wake up and reach for their coffee, Charles Vega is already there. He has been there, at the same white-glove building on the same stretch of Manhattan\u2019s most storied corridor, for nearly 15 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He started at 19. He will turn 34 in December. In that time, he has sorted the mail, wrestled with the garbage, fixed laptops for elderly shareholders, held children while parents ran errands, entertained kids who will want a ride on the luggage cart, and walked dogs.<\/p>\n
He is a doorman. He is also, depending on what happens in the next five days, the man New York City cannot afford to lose.<\/p>\n
Charles Vega, a 33-year-old Park Avenue doorman of nearly 15 years, is one of 34,000 residential building workers prepared to strike when their union contract expires April 20. stefano Giovannini for NY Post<\/p>\n
On April 20, the contract covering 34,000 residential building workers \u2014 doormen, porters, superintendents, handypeople, resident managers \u2014 expires. The union, 32BJ SEIU, and the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations have been locked in negotiations that, by Vega\u2019s account, have been less than promising. <\/p>\n
The union is demanding wage increases to keep pace with inflation, stronger pension benefits, and the preservation of fully employer-paid healthcare \u2014 a hard line they say they will not cross.<\/p>\n
A strike vote passed Wednesday <\/a>at a rally steps from his building. The clock is running.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the event of a strike, so many of New York City residents would be without the services that we provide,\u201d Vega said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want it to come to that.\u201d<\/p>\n But they are prepared to.<\/p>\n The Building That Never Sleeps<\/p>\n Vega works a swing shift \u2014 evenings three days a week, overnight two days a week. His building runs a 24-hour service. Someone is always there. On the nights Vega pulls the overnight, it is just him. <\/p>\n Most door persons average a salary of just $62,000 per year and a minimum of $29.78\/per hour. <\/p>\n From Vega\u2019s post, he manages a building of roughly 60 apartments. Packages \u2014 over a hundred a week. Mail, sorted and hand-delivered floor by floor. Garbage runs two to three times daily. And the tenants themselves, some of whom have lived in the building since the 1970s, plus others Vega suspects have been there even longer.<\/p>\n \u201cI was talking to a shareholder just yesterday who remembered the 1976 doorman strike,\u201d he said. The last official, full-scale doorman strike in New York City took place in 1991. That strike lasted 12 days.<\/p>\n Vega describes his relationship with the building\u2019s residents not as professional but personal \u2014 something closer to family.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 32BJ SEIU union and the Realty Advisory Board are deadlocked over three core demands \u2014 wages, pensions, and fully employer-paid healthcare \u2014 with the RAB\u2019s push for premium sharing serving as the hard line Vega and his colleagues refuse to cross. stefano Giovannini for NY Post<\/p>\n Immunocompromised residents who venture out once a week know his face better than most of their neighbors. For some, he is the most consistent human presence in their daily lives.<\/p>\n \u201cI have shareholders that call us every day to just talk to us on the phone,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople who are elderly and they can\u2019t get out of the house that often.<\/p>\n \u201cI think almost immediately there would be an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n The math of a potential strike is staggering. Some 3,300 residential buildings across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Roughly 1.5 million residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n