The blizzard of ’06 was especially cold for residents of the Fordham Hill Cooperative last weekend as they were caught in the middle of a labor dispute pitting maintenance workers against the management company.

Fifteen workers walked off the job early Sunday morning — just as the snow was starting to pile up —and hit the picket lines to protest last month’s layoff of 10 of their colleagues. The management company, Fordham Hill Owners Corporation, blamed a budget squeeze caused by the rising cost of fuel and said the layoffs might only be temporary.

“We said from the beginning that we would revisit the layoffs in three to six months,” said property manager Everton Moore.

Fordham Hill, a nine-building, 1,100-unit self-managing apartment complex at Sedgwick Avenue and Fordham Road, is home to prominent Bronxites such as state assemblyman Jose Rivera and state Senator Efrain Gonzalez.

The tenants depend on the maintenance department’s 28-member staff for garbage collection, cleanup and, during the winter, snow removal.

But since the layoffs, the remaining workers say they have had to work extra days and double shifts to pick up the slack. Besides the rehiring of their coworkers, at the top of their list of demands is a new contract. They’ve been without one since March 2005.

“We want a contract and we want these guys back because it’s too much for us,” said maintenance worker Mario Sosa, as he picketed last Tuesday.

And some tenants say they are fed up with the Fordham Hill Owners for cutting services while raising monthly maintenance fees 17.5 percent in January.

 “They laid those people off, but they still raised the rents,” said tenant Nila Reynoso. “Where’s the money going?”

She said that although she has had to step in and clean the hallways she supports the striking workers, whom she says deserve better treatment. “I feel sorry for the people who were laid off,” Reynoso said. “They were good people with families to support.”

But Moore disputes the claim that any residents have had to work since the strike began. He said a contingency plan, which includes him personally shoveling snow, has been in effect.

He also said that the strikers, represented by the Service Employees International Union, were being “intentionally disruptive” by striking at the beginning of the blizzard, on the one day of the week that management staff is off.

Union spokesman Daniel Massey called the timing of the strike simply “a fortunate coincidence.”

The strike also came two days before a board meeting in which the co-op was to decide how to respond to the union’s demands for a new contract, which have been public for months.

“We knew what they wanted. And now they’ve done this before we’ve even had a chance to act,” Moore said.

When the two sides went to the bargaining table Friday, Feb. 17, management presented the union with an offer including two reinstated employees and increased wages and benefits. Massey described it as “woefully inadequate.” He said the union countered with a request to have six workers reinstated, as well as a standard Bronx Realty Advisory Board (BRAB) contract with annual pay raises. Fordham Hill is not a BRAB member.

“These are very reasonable demands that every other Bronx owner has been able to accede to,” Massey said. Moore countered, “It is management’s opinion that the union’s demands are unrealistic.”

E. Doyle McCarthy, an outspoken resident, said that although the strike did not significantly affect Fordham Hill’s quality of life, she and other residents would like to see it resolved soon and the workers’ demands met.

“My talking to residents leaves me with the sense that we want union maintenance workers at Fordham Hill,” McCarthy said. “We think it’s important to the quality of life for the residents and the co-op that we have this union continuing as the staff.”