MILWAUKEE– Milwaukee police have agreed to pay more for their health care in exchange for pay raises, the last and largest of the city's public safety unions to reach a deal under a new state bargaining law.
The Milwaukee Police Association deal would bring slightly larger raises for some 1, 700 rank-and-file police officers and detectives than previous agreements gave police commanders and firefighters. But city negotiators achieved a key goal by requiring the officers and investigators to pay 12% of their health care premiums, the same proportion all other city employees must pay under the new state law and the other public safety union contracts, City Labor Negotiator Troy Hamblin said.
Police union members ratified the deal last week, 54% to 46%, union President Mike Crivello wrote in a memo to Hamblin. The Common Council's Finance & Personnel Committee will discuss it Wednesday.
Under the contract, annual premiums will more than triple for single workers, from $240 to $864, while family premiums will rise from $480 a year to $1,296 to $2,592, depending on the number of adults and children in the employee's household. The same increases take effect Jan. 1 for all other city employees, including elected officials.
In addition to mandating the higher health care premiums, the state law known as Act 10 ended most collective bargaining for most public employees – except law enforcement officers and firefighters.
The city's three public safety unions were working under extensions of contracts that expired at the end of 2009, until the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association and the Milwaukee Police Supervisors Organization reached agreements earlier this fall.
Police association members rejected a similar deal, 52% to 48%, however, sending both sides back to the bargaining table.
Like the police supervisors' and firefighters' pacts, the police association contract would be a threeyear deal that retroactively freezes pay for 2010 and incorporates some premium pay into base salaries for 2011. Next year, base wages would rise 3.6% across the board for all police association members, plus another $575 a year for patrol officers.
The extra boost for patrol officers is the major difference between this contract and the previously rejected deal, which would have provided a 4.3% across-theboard raise, although the cost to the city comes out the same, Hamblin said.
Patrol officers make up the overwhelming majority of police association members, outnumbering detectives and forensic investigators, Hamblin said. In a similar move, the police supervisors' union contract provided raises of 4.75% for sergeants – that union's largest group – and 3% for lieutenants, captains and deputy inspectors, which worked out to the same 4% raise that firefighters received.
After the first police association deal was voted down, union president Crivello issued a statement saying his members were concerned that officers were being required to take on duties previously handled by detectives, without additional compensation. In a statement posted on the association's website about the latest deal, Crivello wrote, "This pending contract represents this association's recognition of our neighbors and the difficult times that are currently clear and present amongst us.The contract is a representation of sacrifice and compromise." He and other union leaders did not return telephone and email messages seeking further comment.
The deal also would: Require the city to hire 100 more police officers by the end of 2012. That would not necessarily increase the number of officers on the street, depending on how many current officers leave the force. The goal includes the 35 cadets now in the police academy and requires another academy class to start by Aug. 15.
Cut pay for police cadets to 75% of regular police officers' wages while they are in the academy. The firefighters' contract includes a similar provision, Hamblin said.
Police and firefighters were exempt from the new state law's requirement to pay half their pension costs. City Attorney Grant Langley and two outside law firms have said that pension provision cannot apply to city employees, and another city workers' union has joined in a lawsuit to overturn the law, partly on that basis.
If the finance panel endorses the contract Wednesday, it could reach the council floor Dec. 20.
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