Mountains of trash bags sprouted across Co-op City on Tuesday as residents and office workers rushed to perform basic maintenance tasks left undone by more than 500 unionized janitors, groundskeepers and parking attendants who went on strike in a contract dispute.  With more than half of the staff at the sprawling northeast Bronx housing development on strike, many residents feared that conditions would quickly deteriorate. The 35-building complex, with more than 50,000 residents, generates up to 40 tons of garbage each day.  To many, the dispute between the management company, the RiverBay Corporation, and the union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, is an affront to the founding ideals of Co-op City. It was opened in the 1970s as a cooperative community to provide comfortable, affordable homes for working-class families.  “This place was built by unions,” said Alexander Vargas Jr., a groundskeeper and truck driver who has worked at Co-op City for 19 years. “To treat the working-class people the way they are should show those who live here that the company really doesn’t care about the working class.”  Local 32BJ is the same union that threatened to strike in April over a contract for some 30,000 doormen, porters and janitors. But while that dispute involved building employees who often lived far from their exclusive workplaces, many of the workers who went on strike at Co-op City also live there.  Courtney Lumley, 36, who has worked at Co-op City for 16 years and lived there all his life, said: “I don’t want to see the place fall apart. We make the place look good for everybody. But if you freeze my wages, it’s going to be difficult to pay my rent.”  The strike stems from a disagreement over health care coverage. RiverBay has demanded that employees switch to a plan that it says will save $1.3 million a year without drastically affecting care. The union says the cheaper plan offers inferior protection.  But in a sign of how far apart the two sides remained, they could not agree on whether they were in disagreement over pay raises. The union said that during negotiations, RiverBay sought to freeze pay for the next four years. Management said it had offered a 2.33 percent annual increase. The contract expired early Tuesday.  Hours after the strike began, many residents began carrying their own trash outside and performing other small tasks left undone. Despite the extra chores, most people said they sided with the union. They cited stingy managers, longtime support for labor and compassion for their neighbors.  “We have to be sympathetic to the workers because we are workers ourselves,” said Vincent Matthews, 84, a retired Postal Service worker who moved to Co-op City in 1993. “I’m not with management when it comes to guys standing out here.”  Mr. Matthews was discussing the issue with Kevin Lambright, who said he also supported the workers, some of whom he counted as friends.  “Workers that are here and work in our building have been there for years,” said Mr. Lambright, who has lived there for nearly 15 years. “It’s a relationship more than anything.”  Vernon Cooper, the general manager of RiverBay, said the workers deserved a pay raise, and he dismissed the union’s claims of a proposed wage freeze. Mr. Cooper said RiverBay had merely floated the wage freeze option as a hypothetical example to encourage union officials to offer a compromise.  He said the real problem was that the company could no longer afford the more expensive health care plan. “We have huge structural problems, and we have huge capital needs,” he said.  Mr. Cooper said the cheaper plan would offer much the same coverage. First Actuarial Consulting Team, a company RiverBay hired to compare the two plans, found them to be “very similar, and in most situations virtually identical.”  A union spokesman, Matthew Nerzig, said the current plan had no annual cap, while the other plan had a cap of $200,000. The current plan also offers more generous out-of-network coverage and a better dental program, he said.  “Three years ago, we helped RiverBay cut costs by moving these workers onto a less costly plan,” Mr. Nerzig said. “Now they are insisting on a change to a substandard plan.”  Mr. Cooper said he hoped for a swift resolution. “We have negotiated in good faith,” he said. “We encourage the union to come back to the table.”
A dispute over health care left basic maintenance tasks undone at a huge complex in the Bronx where many of its employees live.