City Cuts Police OT in Half Once Union Contract’s Restrictive Language Was Removed

Michigan Capitol Confidential ^ | 6/3/2012 | Tom Gantert

[MichCapCon]

When Joyce Parker took over as emergency manager for the city of Ecorse in 2009, she was faced with a police union whose five-year contract had been expired for two years.

Faced with $8 million in debt, Parker wasn’t going to be able to save any money in police overtime with more efficient scheduling. That was because the contract wouldn’t allow it.

The provision of the Police Officers Association of Michigan contract read: “The City will not change the work schedule resulting in the loss of overtime.”

“I’ve never seen that in a contract,” Parker said this month. “There is language you will find in those contracts that doesn’t exist in other contracts. It’s a good example of how extreme some of the language is in some of these contracts.”

Eventually, an arbitrator ruled in favor of the city allowing them to alter schedules and reduce overtime.

The city of Ecorse paid $302,796 in police overtime in 2007-08. With one month left in fiscal 2011-12, Ecorse is on track to pay about $147,000 in police overtime, or more than 50 percent less than what was paid four years ago, said Tim McCurley, the city’s contracted controller.

Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said such restrictive language in union contracts creates a “vicious circle.”

“It is politicians who are getting money from unions or bureaucrats who want to keep unions happy,” Vernuccio said. “Before the emergency manager, there was nobody looking out for the taxpayers.”

[Gaffer]

Well, they are there to "Serve and to Serve Profit", aren't they?

[Nervous Tick]

I wonder if the pigs get grumpy and mean when you put a lid over part of their trough...

[Trod Upon]

America is so over-policed it isn’t even funny. Fire half of them and nobody would notice until their taxes fell.

[Crazieman]

The story here is how manipulative the unions are over this sort of thing. My fellow postal clerks here on FR can attest to how much of a convoluted maze and minefield the overtime rules are.

I often get into screaming matches at coworkers over this sort of thing. Suffice it to say, I’m not liked by the union true believers =]

[midcop402]

This is POAM. I was a member of that union while a patrol officer and they did not represent me in a grievance because it would have ‘harmed’ another employee. Once I made sergeant I filed paperwork to sever sergeants from patrol and won that case with MERC (Michigan employment relations commission). I did not pay union dues again for 11 years. My last 2 years as LT I paid dues to POLC (Police Officers Labor Council). I would have refused if the command group gone with POAM.
POAM always has language that encroaches onto management rights. The schedule is ALWAYS management rights, this would have been a winner in arbitration. However, arbitration costs money. The cost of arbitration is why
POAM gets away with stuff like this.

[midcop402]

This is POAM. I was a member of that union while a patrol officer and they did not represent me in a grievance because it would have ‘harmed’ another employee. Once I made sergeant I filed paperwork to sever sergeants from patrol and won that case with MERC (Michigan employment relations commission). I did not pay union dues again for 11 years. My last 2 years as LT I paid dues to POLC (Police Officers Labor Council). I would have refused if the command group gone with POAM.
POAM always has language that encroaches onto management rights. The schedule is ALWAYS management rights, this would have been a winner in arbitration. However, arbitration costs money. The cost of arbitration is why
POAM gets away with stuff like this.

[publius911]

“The City will not change the work schedule resulting in the loss of overtime.”
“I’ve never seen that in a contract,” Parker said this month. “There is language you will find in those contracts that doesn’t exist in other contracts. It’s a good example of how extreme some of the language is in some of these contracts.”

And this illustrates perfectly the cancer that has been killing towns, cities, counties and even states (the national disaster is a whole other problem!)

Elected officials enabled and empowered those union sweetheart contracts!
They would never accept those provisions in a private contract they had to pay personally. That suggests that it is not ignorance and stupidity, but conscious neglect and perversion of their oath of office and legal fiduciary obligations. That's a crime. Why aren't these prosecutable crimes? The perps are out of office, fat, dumb, happy and proud of themselves for saddling the taxpayer with impossible future debt, which is cummulative.

Personally, I would indict the last ten administrative groups responsible to answer for their crimes, plus I would enact laws to define and limit their immunity for what are, for every non elected citizen, jail time crimes.

Can any competent lawyer out there give us the fine points of what constitutes failure of exercising enormous fiduciary obligations?

Sure, we are free to elect the ignorant and the incompetent (ain't egalitarianism and "PC" great?) but we don't have to tolerate their crimes that negatively impact the electorate for generations!

[Uncle Sham]

"we don't have to tolerate their crimes that negatively impact the electorate for generations!"

The U.S. Constitution, Article Four, Section 4: - Republican government

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."

A "Republican" form of government at the time of the founding of this nation was one where citizens were represented by someone they elected. A "Representative Republic". Article Four, Section Four GUARANTEES this to every state in the union. How does this affect the budget and deficit spending one might ask?

It seems to me that to be "represented", one has to be alive and of voting age. Those are two things needed in order to elect someone to represent you. Their "representation" results in governance, part of which is taxation. Someone not of voting age, or not yet born cannot be "represented" and no one can claim to represent someone who is non existent (unborn). Since we are guaranteed a republican form of government, we cannot pass debt to anyone not represented or it breaks the guaranteed representation commitment to them. This means that deficit spending is unconstitutional as is long-term national debt.