Police and fire unions won’t have to worry about losing their
most powerful bargaining chip anytime soon after the city council
postponed a decision to let residents vote on binding
arbitration.
Police and fire unions won’t have to worry about losing their most powerful bargaining chip anytime soon after the city council postponed a decision to let residents vote on binding arbitration.
Council members voted to wait until December to see if there are more residents beyond the 700 or so in the Chamber of Commerce who are interested in voting on a repeal measure of binding arbitration. The chamber believes scrapping binding arbitration – which allows police and fire unions to call in a third-party arbiter to resolve stalled contract negotiations – would free council members’ hands and cut future personnel costs at an opportune time.
Two-thirds of voters approved the practice of binding arbitration and amended the city charter in 1988. Members of police and fire unions cannot strike under state law and therefore they need binding arbitration to level the playing field, they argue. Detractors of binding arbitration argue that the arbiter is not elected, so the person – typically a lawyer – is not accountable and does not necessarily have the interest of the community at heart.
The state Supreme Court is expected to rule within the next couple of years on the constitutionality of such a process – which an appellate court recently ruled is unconstitutional. Gilroy’s charter currently overrides that decision and guarantees local arbitration, but any repeal would leave the city susceptible to state laws.
A motion to bring a ballot resolution back for consideration next month failed by a 3-4 vote – with Council members Peter Arellano, Dion Bracco, Craig Gartman and Perry Woodward voting against it. However, the council voted 5-2 Monday night – with Bracco and Gartman voting no – to reconsider the issue in December.
“Why not gather signatures and do what the public safety employees did as opposed to asking the council to take this on the fly,” Councilman Perry Woodward said to Commerce President and CEO Susan Valenta. Woodward’s comment referenced the successful efforts of Fire Local 2805 and the Gilroy Police Officers’ Association’s in 1988 when they collected enough signatures to put binding arbitration on the ballot. Woodward said he was looking for broader interest across the community, not necessarily the 1,840 signatures necessary to force a ballot measure in November 2010 or the 2,760 necessary to force one in the special spring 2010 election.
“(But) to do that would be very, very time-consuming,” Valenta said – her speech interrupted when half of the dozen firefighters in the council chambers jumped up to respond to a medical call. Sirens and horns whaled out of the parking lot as Valenta raised her voice to be heard.
“This (issue) in it itself has enough validity and research to warrant having it placed on the ballot,” she said.
Placing a measure on one of the two 2010 ballots would cost the city between $46,000 and $72,000, but Valenta said that expense paled compared to the peoples’ right to vote and the $260,000-plus the city spent on arbitration costs with the fire union in 2006. That arbitration resulted in raises for the firefighters that were more than double what the council had proposed.
During the arbitration process, city and union representatives meet with an arbiter – historically a Palo Alto-based lawyer – who looks at each unresolved contract issue and picks one of two sides’ final offers. Mutual agreements are allowed thereafter, but the final decision is binding. Given the fact that about 60 cents of every tax dollar goes to pay police and fire personnel, the arbiter’s decision can have far-reaching fiscal effects.
“If binding arbitration was two parties talking in front of a lawyer, then we’d both have fair chances, but the way it is, it has not given this council the ability to decide, but we decide everything else we spend in this city,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said, echoing arguments from former Planning Commissioner Tim Day and other chamber representatives.
Reading from written remarks, Local 2805 Representative Jim Buessing said the chamber has turned binding arbitration into a “wedge” issue. As the city braces for a $8.4 million deficit by the end of the fiscal year – June 30 – that will lower its general fund reserve to $13.6 million, the council is also negotiating with all four city unions to reduce an expected $4.7 million deficit next year. This deficit could spur up to 33 layoffs after 48 full-time employees – including firefighters but no police officers – lost their jobs Jan. 31.
“The first thing I have to say is, ‘Wow,'” Buessing said. “This sole group has written you a letter to spend money because they don’t like something in the charter.”
Former fire captain Moe McHenry also urged the council to use common sense. He said firefighters “didn’t tell the city to buy Gilroy Gardens” – the purchase of which has since contributed to indebted funds covered by the general fund which pays salaries – and criticized the chamber for “(wanting) public safety as their number one priority, but they don’t want to pay for it.”
Councilwoman Cat Tucker argued residents should decide what they pay for.
“It’s a simple question to me: Do the voters have a right?” she said. “The police have never used it, but it’s hindering the negotiating process because that’s always a hammer that can be brought down. It’s always in the back of your mind.”
The Gilroy Police Officers’ Association has never invoked the process, but Fire Local 2805 has twice and won contract concessions both times since 1988. Detective Mitch Madruga was also at Monday night’s meeting as the POA representative and did not speak. However, Bracco told his colleagues to be wary of “being unfriendly to (public safety) employees” – some of whom receive six figures – not the council falling asleep at the wheel, he said.
