The end is in sight for what is said to be the longest ever arbitration between the City of Springfield and the police union. Starting with a 1997 decision to cut back on the overtime pay that officers earn for showing up at traffic court, the negotiations have stalled and broken down so many times that arbitrator Peter Meyers finally set a 60-day deadline for the parties to reach an agreement.
And until that agreement comes, Meyers wrote, the city must cease and desist using the “new” court schedule instituted as a cost-cutting measure six years ago.
The union sees this decision as a “provisional” victory. “We clearly won this battle,” says Ron Stone, attorney for the Policemen’s Benevolent and Protective Agency Unit 5, “but it’s not the end of the road.”
This epic struggle started with the bright idea to cut back on the time (and therefore the money) spent on officers standing around at municipal court waiting to see if they would be called to testify about traffic tickets. Instead of showing up at 9 a.m. for court, they were told to wait until 10:30 a.m. for a possible phone call. Similarly, for tickets being heard in the afternoon court session, “second shift” (2:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.) officers were told to report to their regular 2:30 squad meeting, ready to go to court if the need arose.
Whether this new schedule makes sense or not has never been discussed and actually doesn’t much matter. The problem with it is that it was implemented without first checking with the officers. That violated the collective bargaining agreement between the city and PBPA, according to a decision issued in February 2000 by Peter Maniscalco, the first arbitrator on the case. (Maniscalco, tragically, died while this case was pending; he was 71).
Putting this “new” schedule in place also removed any incentive the city might have had to settle the union’s grievance. According to its own calculations, the city saved more than half a million dollars using this schedule between June 1997 and March 2003.
But one man’s gain is another man’s loss. While the city was saving money, the officers were missing out on earning overtime pay. No wonder they filed a grievance.
It’s now possible the city could end up owing these officers back pay. But it’s more likely that the PBPA will use whatever they’ll get in this settlement to offset another arbitration point still pending–health insurance.
“It’s not a given, but it’s something that would be explored,” Stone says.
“Any time you’ve got potential sums of money owing from one party to another,
you look for ways to solve all your conflicts at once.”
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2003.
