FPD pay raises approved by arbitration
From the MWDN, it looks like the pay hikes will cost the city 900,000. The contract includes retroactive 2% for all union memebers in year one, 2% for year two and aditional .5% raise in year two in exchange for the way complaints are handled against officers. Under the new deal, FPD will acept anonymous and thrid party complaints, wwhether made verbally or in writing. Complaints will be acepted by mail, internet, telephone, fax or e mail.
The Mayor proposes paying (490,000) for this out of the salary reserve fund and the rest of the the police budget. Base pay for officers for the day shift ranges from 48,529 to 56,863 a year.
Other perks include officers to be compensated a minimum of 4 hours for going to court, at time and a half the regular base rate pay.
I personally would have liked to see body and dash cams worked into the contract and some type of a system to rein in the sick time/overtime abuse.
All this while 74 of them make over 100,000 a year and 9 of them including the unions are still suing the city. It's up to the council to approve and I'm sure they won't question anything in the contract.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 9:53 AM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
I think the pay rate for our officers is fair, so have no complaint about that. I do however strongly agree with Jim about the abuse of sick time, and perhaps FMLA also. There is no way we should have the type of overtime we do here in Framingham unless someone is scamming the system. It is not uncommon in police and fire departments for someone to call out sick in order for someone else to be able to pick up an overtime shift. For police especially, that is worrisome as they carry guns, and I am not comfortable with someone working a 16 hour shift while carrying a gun. Being tired increases stress levels and decreases rational responses in a crisis. Do we want tired and stressed officers dealing with issues in our community? I think there needs to be an honest and open discussion about this with the unions. Not finger pointing and no blaming. Just a discussion on how to better deal with the issue of over time. Then there is the details questions. Not sure how you deal with that one. Do the construction companies that have police details pay for those themselves or does that come out of the Framingham budget?
Did this year's budget include money to cover this additional expenses, and if not, why not? Did they now know this was coming?
I think we are residents and taxpayers have a right to know the details of these, and all, union contracts. Is this information posted anywhere on the city website? Newton has something like what I would like to see. Check it out with this link: http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/hr/union.asp
Here is a question for you Jim. This contract was negotiated by an arbitration panel because the unions and the city could not come to an agreement. How different is this agreement from where they were at when this when to arbitration? I am looking to see who was being unreasonable here. Did the city get concessions they were not able to get without the arbitrator, or did the union get concessions from the city they were not able to get without an arbitrator? I am curious as to why did the city need to use an outside group of people to negotiate a fair contract with the police union?
I know this article says that the City Council has to approve this, but do they have any power to do anything BUT approve it? Can they reject it, and if they do, what happens then?
In line with a question by a previous poster how many of the contracts in Framingham end up having to go to arbitrators to be negotiated? Does the City and/or union have to pay anything for these arbitrators? If so, where does that money come out of the budget? And the obvious question, why can’t the city of Framingham negotiate these successfully themselves?
The police unions everywhere think they have free reign to do whatever they want whenever they want. Just look at the MA State Police if you doubt that. And they continue to get away with things in spite of the issues that have been brought to light by reporters. First, it should not be reporters who are uncovering the illegal and criminal behavior of cops. As cops they are trained to find things that are not being done legally, but they can not see that their fellow officers are scamming the overtime system? If they are such poor cops they are missing this, then they should not be cops to start with!
arbitration costs are agreed upon before it gets started. We don't know what either side was asking for, but in some cases, the loser pays for the winner. Average daily costs run around 1500.00 a day, plus expenses.
Seems like the arbitrators lean towards the unions, but I have no factual data to support that view.
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