New deal requires officers help city pay their health care
costs
Gilroy – Just months after a bruising labor fight between City Hall and the firefighter’s union, Gilroy’s police officers have quietly struck a deal that affords them a 9 percent raise over the course of the three-year contract, but increases their share of spiraling health-care premiums.
The city will pick up the first 5 percent of increases to health-care costs each year, leaving the 62 members of the Gilroy Police Officer’s Association to pay any additional costs. Police officers with families enrolled in basic health and dental plans will pay $61 a month in 2007 (based on projected cost increases), whereas under the current package the officers would pay nothing. The new contract is not yet finalized. Under the current union agreement, the starting salary for a new police officer is $66,305 a year.
Getting the city’s three labor unions to pick up a share of health care costs has been a top priority for city officials.
“Every year we didn’t know what was going to happen with these double digit increases (in health care costs),” said LeeAnn McPhillips, Gilroy’s human resources director and a member of the city’s bargaining team. “Now we have a controlled amount of 5 percent that the health care contribution can go up and we can factor that into the budget. Our numbers our known.”
In exchange for the cap on health care contributions, the city agreed to increase annual uniform allowances by $300 or more (depending on the type of officer) and establish a program that rewards veteran officers for providing specialized services, such as fire-arms training or serving on the SWAT team. The Masters Officer program provides a 5 percent salary bump to officers who perform nine years of such specialized service.
Overall, the new contract will cost the city an additional $830,000 annually, McPhillips estimated.
“It’s not the worst that we’ve done, it’s not the best that we’ve done,” said Police Detective Frank Bozzo, the union’s chief negotiator. “These things have to be gauged on economics and timing and the community. Overall, I think we got a fair shake.”
Both sides characterized the negotiations as “positive” despite a month-long breakdown in talks. The police union declared impasse in negotiations Sept. 19 over what Bozzo described as disagreement on the “totality of all the issues.”
The breakdown came a few days before an outside arbitrator awarded firefighters a 10 percent wage increase, capping a bitter year of wrangling between City Hall and the fire union. Disagreements between the sides grew so bitter that Mayor Al Pinheiro led a council effort to uproot binding arbitration through the ballot box. The move fizzled amid union threats of political retribution in the run-up to the 2005 council election.
The arbitration process slowed police union negotiations, which began in April, but ultimately helped police forge a contract with City Hall.
“I think mostly it answered some questions from the POA perspective,” Bozzo said. “Certain areas we were going in we wanted to make sure we were within reason and standards, and fire arbitration helped clear a lot of that up.”
Police returned to the bargaining table in late October after a one-month impasse. Two weeks later, the sides reached final agreement on the major contractual issues.
Mayor Al Pinheiro said the city would have liked to see smaller pay increases, but it was not prepared to go through another round of arbitration over “1 or 2 percentage points.”
“Under the circumstances, we did the best we can with the negotiations,” he said. “We tried to do all we could not to have to go to arbitration and end up spending more money as we did with fire. I believe at the end it was a win-win for both sides.”
The police contract retroactively covers the period from July 2006 through June 2009. It applies to sergeants, corporals, officers, and multi-service officers who transport prisoners to and from county jail. It does not cover the department’s chief, assistant chief or three captains.
City Hall will begin a new round of contract negotiations with the fire union in August.
