{"id":349848,"date":"2026-09-18T01:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T01:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349848\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T01:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T01:48:15","slug":"city-council-pressures-mamdani-to-drop-lawsuit-blocking-10k-payments-to-nyc-teaching-assistants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349848\/","title":{"rendered":"City Council pressures Mamdani to drop lawsuit blocking $10K payments to NYC teaching assistants"},"content":{"rendered":"

City Council Members are pressuring Mayor Zohran Mamdani <\/a>to drop a city lawsuit <\/a>blocking $10,000 checks for paraprofessionals \u2013 claiming they\u2019ll drop the giveaway if Hizzoner comes to the bargaining table and opens the Big Apple\u2019s checkbook.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The council and Speaker Julie Menin filed a response to Mamdani\u2019s Aug. 19 lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday, saying the case should be thrown out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not want to have to pass this bill,\u201d said Menin of Local Law 129 \u2013 which would issue emergency \u201cworkforce stabilization \u201d checks to teaching assistants whose current starting salary is $32,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani blocked a bill passed by the City Council to give teaching assistants a $10,000 bonus. Getty Images<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always wanted the administration to collectively bargain this or put it in the budget, but that didn\u2019t happen, so we had to act, and that\u2019s why we passed our bill,\u201d Menin explained at a rally on the City Hall steps Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Mamdani administration filed a lawsuit <\/a>against the bill hours after its passing \u2013 claiming it violated Taylor\u2019s Law \u2013 a New York statute that gives public sector employees the right to organize and collectively bargain with their employers.<\/p>\n

UTF President Michael Mulgrew (pictured) stood with Menin Thursday, arguing that the group has been trying to negotiate with the Mamdani administration. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table,\u201d Mamdani said at the time of the lawsuit\u2019s filing.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

But Menin, joined by council members and paras, argued the bill doesn\u2019t circumvent the collective bargaining process between the teachers union and the Department of Education \u2013 and blamed the administration for not moving forward with the bargaining process to begin with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur bill goes away if the administration collectively bargains this,\u201d Menin argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if the administration collectively bargains and does the right thing and pays the paraprofessionals what they deserve, our bill goes away, and nothing would make us happier than that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaker Julie Menin defended the bill Thursday, claiming it in no way circumvents Taylor\u2019s law. Lone Pine Press for NY Post<\/p>\n

Michael Mulgrew,<\/a> president of the United Federation of Teachers \u2013the union that represents nearly 90,000 New York City public school teachers and 25,000 paraprofessionals \u2014 echoed Menin\u2019s statements, and claimed the union was trying to do its part to move the bargaining process forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mayor made a promise. He promised the paraprofessionals that we would fix this, we would get this done. We tried to do it. We are continuing to try to do it\u2026with collective bargaining,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s the city and its agencies who created this problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hizzoner told The Post in a statement that his team was \u201cnegotiating in good faith to address the inequity permanently\u201d and that he had a \u201cpositive working relationship with Mulgrew\u201d \u2013 whom he celebrated the first day of school with on Staten island last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we work towards a resolution to the litigation and to protect collective bargaining, the City will continue working with UFT and all our labor partners to make meaningful investments in the workers who keep our city running,\u201d said Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for the mayor.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Council Members are pressuring Mayor Zohran Mamdani to drop a city lawsuit blocking $10,000 checks for paraprofessionals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19077,1092,57,9,56,63,65,64,5181,13038,4338,58,82],"class_list":["post-349848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-julie-menin","tag-mayor","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-teachers","tag-teachers-union","tag-united-federation-of-teachers","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}