Tuesday, October 9, 2007
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Union, Sheriff's Office At Impasse Police pay raise plan passes unanimously Police pay raise approved BPOA close to signing pay raise contract Police seek to resolve talks |
From NY1, October 2, 2007
A tentative labor deal has been reached between the city and the police detectives union, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday.
Joined by the head of the Detectives Endowment Association and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the mayor made the announcement Tuesday at City Hall.
If ratified, the contract for the city's 5,300 detectives would increase wages and other benefits by more than 20 percent over the four-year life of the deal.
"We expect an awful lot from them, and they deliver,” said the mayor. “And the only way you keep a happy workforce is to meet your obligations. So the citizens and taxpayers of the city are doing that here, and I think its clear that they detectives are doing a spectacular job."
"This is a very equitable contract for the active detectives, the young, the veterans, and even the retirees are taking benefits in this contract,” said Michael Palladino of the Detectives Endowment Association.
"We have the best detectives in the world, and it's only fitting that they be well compensated in the safest big city in the world,” said Kelly.
The contract would go into effect this coming April and will run through 2012.
Meanwhile, there is still no deal between the city and the union representing the Police Department's rank-and-file, where stalled contract talks are still under arbitration.
Union, Sheriff's Office At Impasse
From The Tampa Tribune, October 8, 2007
TAMPA - Weeks have passed since the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and the union that represents deputies reached an impasse in negotiating a new contract. Both sides accuse the other of stalling tactics.
"We've been stalled in the same position for over a month," Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jose Docobo said during an interview last week. "There's been no communication from them to us as to having another meeting."
Deputy Mike Rouleau, president of the West Central Florida Police Benevolent Association's Hillsborough County Chapter, disagreed and addressed the stalling issue in a post to the union's online message board Thursday.
"After the last negotiations meeting, PBA attorney Bob McCabe made several inquiries about when we could meet again," he wrote. "The sheriff's office would provide no dates, and we feel that they were stalling while waiting for the current contract to expire."
The union includes about 1,100 Hillsborough deputies.
Docobo said the sheriff's office offered the fairest pay raise - about an average of 4.5 percent for patrol deputies and 5 percent for detention deputies - it could afford under the approved budget. He said the union turned it down, with its hand out for more.
"We don't know what they expect," Docobo said. "We've made our final offer that's allowed for in our final budget." The offer, he said, was "very fair."
"It is certainly much more than the general public or other county employees are getting," he said.
Rouleau called Docobo's estimation "not close to true."
The proposed raise, he said, amounts to less than 1 percent for officers employed for more than 10 years because they have reached the top of their pay scale. Newer officers would get raises of a higher percentage than those who have been there longer. That accounts for at least half of the sheriff's roster of deputies, he said.
Another point of contention is whether to allow union members to conduct union business while on the taxpayer's clock, Docobo said.
"They want us to release their representatives to work full time to do only union business," Docobo said. "Absolutely not, If you want to work for the union, then go work for the union. If you want to work for the sheriff's office, then you work for citizens of Hillsborough County."
Rouleau said he is the only union administrator working full time, and his salary would be paid out of the holiday time pay earned by union members and would not bring any financial burden to the sheriff's office.
Rouleau has appealed for an arbitration hearing to the state's Public Employee Relations Commission. If a hearing is granted, it could be months from now.
If a magistrate finds in favor of the union, the union hopes the sheriff's office would comply in a show of good faith to the deputies, though it would not be legally bound to do so, Rouleau said.
Deputies continue working under the existing contract, which expired Sept. 30. If and when a new contract is signed, any raise would not be retroactive, Docobo said.
Police pay raise plan passes unanimously
From the Buffalo News, October 3, 2007
A plan to give Buffalo police officers 3.4 percent raises retroactive to July 1 cleared a second hurdle Tuesday when the Common Council unanimously backed the $2.3 million expenditure.
The state control board that oversees city finances is expected to consider the plan next month. Bryce Link, board spokesman, said it’s too early to say what action the panel might take.
All nine Council members voted for Mayor Byron W. Brown’s plan to give officers one of the raises they missed during a 38-month period when the city was under a wage freeze imposed by the control board. The mayor argued that the raise complies with a legal opinion that city workers were eligible to move one step up the salary ladder when the board lifted the wage freeze July 1.
“Police officers put themselves in danger every day,” Council President David A. Franczyk said. Ellicott Council Member Brian C. Davis, chairman of the Finance Committee, sponsored the bill to authorize the raises. State aid would cover the added costs, city fiscal experts said.
Lovejoy Council Member Richard A. Fontana said police officers deserve raises. But he added that ensuring raises for city employees at the lower end of the salary tier was equally important.
Workers’ paychecks have not changed in four years, and some have been waiting five or even six years for raises.
Police officers are among the highest paid city employees. The raise would increase most officers’ salaries by $1,971, to $59,949.
Robert P. Meegan Jr., president of the Police Benevolent Association, did not return calls seeking comment, but he told The Buffalo News last week that the city isn’t doing officers “any favors.” The union is in court, trying to convince a judge that officers are owed 10.2 percent in raises under a contract ratified in 2003, shortly before the control board era began. Officers received $5,000 across-the-board raises, plus a 3.4 percent increase as part of a contract that included the introduction of one-officer cars. But they were denied three additional raises after the wage freeze took effect.
Brown administration officials and Council members have been urging the police union to try to negotiate a long-term settlement.
Now that the wage freeze has been lifted, Council Majority Leader Dominic J. Bonifacio Jr. said he remains optimistic that the city can negotiate contracts with all its unions.
“Hopefully, we’re going to see other bargaining units come to the table,” he said.
Police pay raise approved
From the Rocky Mountain News ,September 18, 2007
14 percent hike by 2010 called 'catch-up' move
The Denver City Council approved a three-year contract with police Monday that will cost taxpayers nearly $8 million next year.
Mayor John Hickenlooper's 2008 spending plan includes that amount for officers' wages and benefits as a result of the collective bargaining agreement.
The contract calls for police to receive a 14 percent raise in increments, starting in January.
For an experienced officer, it means $9,000 more a year by 2010.
Councilman Doug Linkhart, chairman of the safety committee, said that officers got a fair shake and that the city got a good deal.
"It's kind of a catch-up piece," he said. "In the last round, they got very little, and we're catching up in terms of the health premiums and the wages, really trying to be competitive with other cities because we're losing officers. We need to stay competitive."
In the last police contract, officers received a 5 percent pay increase between 2004 and 2007.
Nick Rogers, vice president of the Denver Police Protective Association, said he is satisfied with the latest contract. He said it will bring officers back to a "respectable level" of pay for the next three years.
"We're down in the metro area and nationally, we're down even further in pay," Rogers said. "But it gets us back to where I think it will help recruiting. It will help retention of officers."
Linkhart said he is glad that the negotiating process "wasn't as adversarial as it has been sometimes."
"We negotiated in good faith, and I thought the mayor's team did a good job of negotiating," he said.
Nearly half of Denver's proposed $866 million general fund, which is used to pay for day- to-day operations, is earmarked for public safety.
Hickenlooper's budget proposal also includes more than $4.4 million for firefighter wages and salaries. The contract with firefighters expires Dec. 31, 2008.
For the sheriff's department, no increase is built into the spending plan for collective bargaining.
Negotiations with deputies will start in October, so the wage and benefits increase is unknown.
BPOA close to signing pay raise contract
From The Enterprise, September 28, 2007
While city firefighters have gone without a pay raise since 2005 because of litigation, the Beaumont Police Officers Association is a step closer to signing a contract after four months of negotiations.
The City Council Tuesday voted to allow City Manager Kyle Hayes to sign the agreement. The contract still has to be presented to the rest of the union membership for approval, and no date has been set for that.
The police union's existing contract with the city ends Sunday. The new one, when finalized, will effectively give police officers a 20 percent pay increase over four years.
It calls for officers to receive a 5 percent increase in the 2007 through 2009 fiscal years and a four percent increase in 2010.
The pay range for patrol officers is $40,439.98 to $54,983.97, according to salary tables obtained from the city in April.
By the end of the four years, those salaries would increase to $48,686.91 and $66,196.85 in 2010.
Union president Sgt. Mike Mills and Hayes said the negotiating process went smoothly.
Some items that changed within the contract include the grievance and disciplinary appeals procedure, promotions, the medical plan and citizen complaint procedures.
The citizens' complaint procedures call for those lodging a claim to submit to a polygraph. Even if they don't, the police chief still can force the officer to take a test.
The city and the police union, which began negotiations on May 9, have been involved in collective bargaining since the 1980s.
Police seek to resolve talks
From the Times-Union, October 9, 2007
Union asks for arbitration after weeks of impasse with city over new contract
SCHENECTADY -- The city's police union said it will file for arbitration this week in hopes of resolving an impasse in contract negotiations with the city.
Contract negotiations, which have been ongoing for two years, bogged down in the middle of the summer. Schenectady Police Benevolent Association President Lt. Robert Hamilton said a mediator has been working on the matter the past few months but talks remain stalled.
Hamilton said police want the same deal the Schenectady firefighters union got at the end of 2006 -- a five-year contract that calls for 4 percent raises each year. But Hamilton said the city has not committed to giving any raises in the next contract.
John Paolino, a city finance official, is working on the police union contract. But he declined to comment on the negotiations.
"If they have decided they're going to negotiate in the paper, so be it," Paolino said.
Paolino referred questions to Michael Smith, an attorney who is representing the city in the contract negotiations. Smith could not be reached for comment.
Schenectady police on average received 3 percent raises annually in their last contract, which expired in January 2006. Negotiations began in October 2005.
"You give firemen raises, but they don't want to do the same thing for us," Hamilton said. "They've left us no choice but to go to arbitration."
There has been tension between police and the city's administration at times after the recent scandal involving missing drug evidence from the department.
Former Schenectady police Detective Jeffrey Curtis was sentenced last month to four years in state prison for stealing drugs to feed a secret addiction. Earlier this year, Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton brought in former State Police Superintendent Wayne Bennett to oversee both the police and fire departments.
The request for an arbitrator, who will listen to both sides and make a ruling on the contract, needs to be granted by the state Public Employment Relations Board.
The Fire Department avoided arbitration and settled its contract with a mediator at the end of 2006, also after about two years of negotiation. As a result of those talks, the city will have to include more than $1.5 million in its 2008 budget for retroactive raises for firefighters.
The city is currently setting aside money for retroactive raises it may owe the police union after the contract is settled.
In order to get the 4 percent raise, firefighters agreed to pay 5 percent of their health insurance costs. Previously, firefighters got their health insurance for free. Hamilton said the police union would also be willing to pay the same cost for health insurance to get the 4 percent raise.
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