Jerome Lefkowitz

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/obituaries/jerome-lefkowitz-a-fo...

Jerome Lefkowitz, a Force in New York Labor Law, Dies at 86

ImageJerome Lefkowitz, left, and his son Jay in a family photo showing them in front of the United States Supreme Court in 2013 after the younger Mr. Lefkowitz, also a lawyer, had argued a case there. Jerome Lefkowitz, left, and his son Jay in a family photo showing them in front of the United States Supreme Court in 2013 after the younger Mr. Lefkowitz, also a lawyer, had argued a case there. By Sam Roberts Jan. 5, 2018

Jerome Lefkowitz, a labor lawyer and mediator who helped draft the Taylor Law, which grants New York public employees collective bargaining rights but forbids them from striking, died on Dec. 21 at his home in Albany. He was 86.

The cause was complications of an infection, his son Jay said.

Mr. Lefkowitz oversaw the Taylor Law’s enforcement as well. He was hired in 1967 as the first employee of the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, which was created to carry out the new bargaining regulations. He became its deputy chairman and served in that post for 20 years, drafting many of its rulings.

The law, officially the New York State Public Employees’ Fair Employment Act, covers state and local governments and school districts and went into effect in 1967.

The commission that drafted the legislation was formed by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1966 in the wake of a crippling New York City transit strike. Its chairman was George W. Taylor, an industrial relations professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a former chairman of the National War Labor Board.

Governor Rockefeller recruited Mr. Lefkowitz to join it.

Typically, state legislation is named for the lawmakers who sponsored it, but Professor Taylor was immortalized by default.

“No one wanted their name on it,” Mr. Lefkowitz recalled in an interview with The New York Times in 2002, “because the New York City unions were very articulate in their opposition to the law.”

While the Taylor Law made instigating, encouraging or condoning public employee strikes illegal, it replaced an even harsher statute, the 1947 Condon-Wadlin Act. That law had not only barred strikes but also penalized striking workers with dismissal. Regulations drafted under the new law also protected workers against reprisals for organizing.

Though the Taylor Law was often flouted, it provided for painful penalties, including hefty fines and loss of a union’s automatic dues deductions from employees’ paychecks. It also mandated binding arbitration for vital workers, including police officers and firefighters, and created a cadre of skilled negotiators.

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“Mediators must have the facility to listen to what the negotiators are saying and to hear priorities and demands that may not be articulated explicitly,” Mr. Lefkowitz said in 2005. “When they start making progress, more trade-offs follow pretty quickly, once you can break the ice.”

ImageJerome Lefkowitz in 1972. He was the first employee of the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, which was created to carry out the bargaining regulations he had helped draft. Jerome Lefkowitz in 1972. He was the first employee of the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, which was created to carry out the bargaining regulations he had helped draft.CreditAssociated Press By granting public employees the right to organize and bargain collectively, the law expanded the political leverage unions wielded over elected officials.

“People began to realize that public employees have a weapon that exceeds the right to strike in the private sector,” Mr. Lefkowitz said in 2002. “They can vote their bosses out.”

Jerome Lefkowitz was born on March 24, 1931, in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx to Jack Lefkowitz, a garment industry executive, and the former Sue Horowitz. Both his parents were active in Jewish organizations.

After graduating from Christopher Columbus High School, he earned a bachelor’s degree in history from New York University and a law degree from Columbia, where he later taught.

He served in the Army in West Germany in the mid-1950s, began his career as an assistant state attorney general and later served as counsel to the New York State Department of Labor and as deputy state industrial commissioner.

In addition to his son Jay, he is survived by his wife, the former Myrna Weishaut; two other sons, Mark and Alan; a daughter, Miriam Lefkowitz; a brother, Leonard; and 10 grandchildren.

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Mr. Lefkowitz resigned as deputy chairman of the Employment Relations Board in 1987 to become deputy counsel of the Civil Service Employees Association, one of New York’s largest public employee unions.

He returned to the board in 2007 as its chairman, appointed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and retired from the post in 2015.

William A. Herbert, who was deputy chairman of the board under Mr. Lefkowitz, wrote last year that Mr. Lefkowitz “eschewed explicit ideology and political labels, preferring pragmatism as his guide.”

Recalling the Taylor Law and other regulations, Danny Donohue, president of the civil service union, said in a statement that Mr. Lefkowitz’s tenure on the board had been “marked by fairness, balance and neutral application of the very laws he helped craft.”

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 6, 2018, Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Jerome Lefkowitz, a Force in New York Labor Law, Dies at 86. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe