James Hanley, Labor Negotiator for Three Mayors, Dies at 69

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James F. Hanley, who started work as a union electrician and went on to become New York City’s chief labor negotiator for nearly 15 years, died on Wednesday on Staten Island. He was 69.

His son Liam said the cause was respiratory failure.

Mr. Hanley worked for 42 years at the city’s Office of Labor Relations. He served as commissioner under three very diverse mayoral administrations and won the trust of union leaders while negotiating scores of contracts for 300,000 municipal employees.

More than half the city’s $86 billion budget is spent on salaries, pensions and other benefits.

“He was an honest broker,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and former chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee, a coalition of unions representing New York civil servants, said in a phone interview.

She added, “He very much tried to make the city work while understanding to his core that city services did not work without a decent relationship between management and labor.”

“And,” she said, “this is from a person who fought him tooth and nail.”

Harry Nespoli, the president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said Mr. Hanley had “represented the city to the best of his ability, but also recognized the working person, because he was a working person.”

Mr. Hanley struck bargains with organized labor both when the city was facing deficits and when it was flush.

Under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and especially during the administration of Michael R. Bloomberg, he shifted the basis of contract talks from solely how much the city could afford to how employees could help the city save money.

As a result, Mr. Hanley negotiated major gains in productivity to help pay for wage hikes and other benefits.

He held the view that more could be accomplished at the bargaining table than through arbitration. In 2008, he struck a deal with the city’s main police union despite lingering animosity between management and labor exacerbated by their 14 years of failure to reach an agreement through negotiations.

“He was an incredibly dedicated and respected public servant who knew every aspect of the city’s bargaining history,” said Robert W. Linn, the current director of labor relations.

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Mayor Edward I. Koch promoted Mr. Hanley to first deputy labor commissioner in 1988. He was chosen as commissioner by Mayor David N. Dinkins, reverted to deputy briefly under Mr. Giuliani and was promoted again in 1995. He retired in 2014.

James Francis Hanley was born on Aug. 25, 1948, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, to Irish immigrants. His father, Jeremiah, was a truck driver for the city. His mother was the former Eileen Linehan. His parents died when he was a teenager.

After graduating from St. Peter’s Boys High School on Staten Island, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from St. Peter’s College (now St. Peter’s University) in Jersey City.

During and after college he worked as an apprentice electrician on the World Trade Center and as a social studies teacher at a parochial school in Harlem while studying for a master’s degree in labor economics at the New School. He joined the Office of Labor Relations in 1973 as a junior researcher.

In addition to his son Liam, he is survived by his wife, the former Elizabeth Giacona; two other sons, Matthew and Terence; four grandchildren; a sister, Maureen Gallagher; and a brother, Jeremiah. Another brother, the Rev. Fintan Hanley, died in 1989. Mr. Hanley lived in the Richmondtown section of Staten Island.

In 2002, wrestling with restrictive work rules inherited from the previously independent Board of Education, Mr. Hanley quietly intervened to facilitate a settlement after seven weeks between striking drivers and private school bus companies.

Over the years he won concessions from unions for lower salaries and benefits for newly hired workers, pledges to help find additional workplace savings, and a discounted subway and bus fare to encourage city employees to commute by mass transit.

Mr. Hanley, who stood an imposing 6-foot-5, was jocular and amiable but, when necessary, could be tough.

During contract negotiations with the teachers’ union, he once recalled, Ms. Weingarten would call him before 7:30 every morning.

“She can see my office window from her apartment, and every day, the moment I walked in and turned on the light, a few minutes later the phone would ring,” Mr. Hanley told The New York Times in 2007. “It was as if she was waiting there for me.”

When protesting firefighters shouted, “Hanley must go; we want our money,” at his Staten Island home, he went outside to suggest a mantra with better cadence. The demonstrators took his advice and changed their chant to “Hanley must go; we want our dough.”