The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino will meet with the Massachusetts Joint Labor Management Committee today and Wednesday in an attempt to settle the police union’s contract – a dispute that has been going on for nearly two years.
The involvement of the Joint Labor Management Committee could be the first step toward having an arbitrator decide the fate of the union’s contract if the two sides cannot come to an agreement beforehand, said Samuel Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a research watchdog organization that has met with both sides to explain the issues and offer advice.
Since the union’s contract expired on June 30, 2002, the BPAA has been fighting for a new contract equal to the lucrative 22 percent raise offered to the firefighter’s union over the four years of their contract, which was signed just after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Thomas Nee, president of the BPAA and a Boston police officer, said it is an “established precedent” across the nation that police and firefighters are paid equal wages. He also said the city is hiding money in reserves that could be used to raise officers’ salaries.
But Menino, as well as the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, maintain that state aid cuts to the city over the past two years have prevented the city from offering police the contract they seek.
The confusion stems from differing “accounting systems” the city uses to report finances, Tyler said.
“What’s confusing is that the union leaders are looking at some numbers that come up with the national standard and think the city has money, but it’s really not an accurate picture of what the city has in reserves and can issue in actual spending,” he said, noting that national standards differ from state standards, and the state must approve every dollar spent.
Tyler said none of the reported surplus is available for collective bargaining right now.
But Nee said the BPPA brought in an independent auditor from the Midwest last spring to research the city’s finances. He said the auditor found “things are not as gloomy as they’re making them out to be.”
“They have a fixed bond rating report that indicates that they have nearly $400 million right now in undesignated, unreserved. It’s sitting there as cash,” Nee said of the auditor’s findings, adding that the city still had nearly $90 million in surplus at the end of last year, the “worst year of local aid cuts anyone can remember.”
Nee said he believes Menino is saving the money for July’s upcoming Democratic National Convention because “there’s going to be huge expenses from that.”
While he could not comment on the specifics of the negotiations, Nee said Menino’s current offer to the police is a three-year contract with a one-time cash bonus and zero wage increases.
“In other words, it’s essentially a wage freeze – that’s what’s on the table right now,” Nee said, an offer he called “unacceptable.”
The BPPA is willing to make the necessary concessions to settle the dispute, but so far Menino has not been willing to negotiate, Nee said. He said Menino’s “take it or leave it” approach is “not acceptable.”
Seth Gitell, Menino’s press secretary, also would not discuss specifics of the negotiations.
“Mayor Menino is eager to get a deal done,” he said. “He won’t harm the city’s future, but he wants to get a deal done.”
The city of Boston has 32 unions with which to negotiate contracts, and only two – the Salaried Employees of North America and the Boston Teachers’ Union – have successfully negotiated their contracts so far.
Tyler said both SENA and BTU recognized the city’s current financial situation and settled for less than some may have liked. The BPPA should do the same, he said.
“I think based on the city’s current financial situation … that the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association’s demands are not reflective of the city’s ability to pay and they need to be more realistic,” he said.
THE ARGUMENT
A rank-and-file officer in Boston earns a minimum of just over $37,000 per year, according to policepay.net, a website that lists police contracts for the 200 largest cities in the United States.
Many Boston police earn much more than that base number from overtime pay and the Quinn Bill, a pay incentive that encourages officers to get a higher education.
But Nee said neither of those issues should be taken into account when negotiating the contract because they are not traditional or guaranteed and a union must negotiate based on traditional pay.
“Overtime pay is not stable,” he said, describing it as supplemental pay that is not guaranteed to officers but is necessary because the department is short-staffed. He said many officers work 80 hours a week to fill that void.
Nee said less than half of the force enjoys the benefits of the Quinn Bill because it is difficult, and sometimes even impossible, for officers to work and attend classes at the same time. It took Nee seven years to get his bachelor’s degree because he could only take one or two courses at a time and had to drive to numerous campuses for classes, he said.
“People can call the Quinn Bill what they want to call it, but it’s not a traditional thing,” he said. “Not everyone can enjoy it. It’s an incentive.”
Nee said many universities that participate in the Quinn Bill program – including Boston University – are unable to meet the new standards of the program, causing many to stop offering it.
Nee also said the state co-pays and supplements the Quinn Bill because of the benefits of having a better educated police force, but because the program is “at the will of the Legislature … [it] could be wiped out at any time.”
THE DNC
With the Democratic National Convention arriving in Boston in just three months and the BPPA threatening to picket the event, Tyler said the union is using the DNC as “leverage to get higher wages so there won’t be any pickets.” He said picketing would embarrass Menino because he is the host of the convention.
“It’s in the interest of both sides to negotiate this before the DNC, but it needs to be a fair contact, consistent with the other contracts and affordable to the city over the four years,” Tyler said.
But Tyler said the convention is only four days long, after which the union will have no more leverage to negotiate, a point that gives Menino reason to tough out the four days of picketing and wait to settle the dispute.
“He’s not going to give away the store just because of four days,” Tyler said.
But Nee said having police who are without contracts staffing the convention goes against the ideals of the Democratic Party.
“If the Democratic mantra is ‘We are the party of the working class,’ it is hypocrisy when nearly every government employee who works for the city is out of a contract,” he said.
Nee said the unions have been picketing nearly every event the mayor has attended since his State of the City address in January because it is an organized way for the rank-and-file police officers to “vent the frustration in lack of progress and to send a message.”
Because the police are public employees, they cannot strike like those in the private sector, Nee said.
“[Pickets] are the most extreme of options, and that’s the end of our options,” he said. “We can’t strike. We won’t strike. We won’t withhold services.”
Gitell said Menino believes the contract negotiations should be done at the negotiating table, but he respects the union’s right to picket.
“Mayor Menino has always said that part of what happens at the convention is that people exercise their First Amendment rights,” Gitell said.
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