From Michigan
Question: I have been a police officer for eight years where the City threatens layoffs at each budget process. This seems to correspond with our “always out of date” contract negotiations. Is there any unfair labor practice issue in what appears to be a bullying tactic or attempts to reduce the number of bargaining members? Although no officers have been laid off, last year seven civilians that work for the Police Department were and this year looks very grim.
Answer: It would be a long shot for a union to be able to show that threats of layoffs amount to a breach of the employer’s obligation to collectively bargain in good faith. The claim would be particularly difficult to prove if the employer had made cutbacks in other areas, and virtually impossible to prove if the employer had actually laid off employees (either in the police department or in other of its operations).
From Arizona
Question: I am a commissioned law enforcement officer currently assigned to the County Courts Complex. Our agency utilizes a security staff with a majority of correctional officers (non-commissioned) and a few commissioned officers.
The corrections officers and commissioned officers work five eight-hour shifts but are required to take a one-hour non-paid lunch break. All the officers are off between the hours of 12:00 and 1:00. For those officers that elect to take their lunch break in the Court Complex, the expectation is they will respond to any assistance calls during their lunch break. Although compensated for responses, is it right for the agency to have an expectation of the response without compensating on-call or standby pay? If officers were present and declined to respond, could he or she be accused of nonfeasance/neglect of duty?
Answer: From what you described, this looks like a collective bargaining issue. Federal courts have been quite conservative as to the circumstances under which standby status counts as “work” for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Unless there are more restrictions than what you describe on an officer’s use of his/her time during a meal period, we’d be surprised to find a court concluding that the meal periods should be compensated.
From Pennsylvania
Question: I had heard that there was a court case (unsure if it is Pennsylvania or federal) where a union can have recourse against an employer who consistently and intentionally violates the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement. Supposedly this action by the employer damages the bargaining unit in its ability to recruit and maintain membership by making the bargaining agreement basically unenforceable and therefore the bargaining unit powerless.
We are in a situation where our administration has repeatedly and intentionally violated the terms of the contract, telling us “Go ahead and grieve it.” This is with the knowledge that mounting expenses and time waiting for arbitration work against the bargaining unit and creates the attitude among the membership that the union is powerless to bring about a reasonable resolution.
Answer: The law on this varies a bit from state to state, so you should definitely check with your local attorney on this. However, the general rule in situations like this is that if an employer has a strong pattern refusing to resolve grievances that are eventually the basis of arbitration decisions unfavorable to it, the employer will be held to have engaged in some version of bad faith bargaining. Usually a critical factor in cases like this is whether the labor organization is repeatedly ultimately successful on grievances the employer failed to resolve at low levels. We don’t know of a recent Pennsylvania case that addresses these issues, though it may well have been under our radar.
From Ohio
Question: I work for a police department in Ohio. We have several pending grievances and would like to share some of these with the local media (newspaper). To your knowledge, would that be a violation of anything?
Answer: Typically, there is no restriction on either party to the grievance procedure making public the issues reflected in grievances. If such a restriction existed, it would likely be contained in the terms of the grievance procedure itself. And, of course, it may be that the governmental employer cannot disclose certain items because of restrictions in the applicable public records law.