From: SF Chronicle

City, police union at contract impasse

Christopher Heredia
3/1/07

The city of Oakland and its police union Wednesday reached an impasse on negotiations for a new contract to replace an agreement that expired June 30, potentially complicating the police chief's plans to reorganize the department along a community policing model.

The Oakland Police Officers Association notified the city by letter that an impasse had been reached. The declaration of impasse, which qualifies the dispute to be sent to binding arbitration, came after the city offered the union membership an 11 percent salary increase over two years, while asking for significant changes in contract language and removal of provisions such as time and a half pay for holidays not worked and a reduction in sick leave from 60 days to 30 days per illness.

Union lawyer Rocky Lucia said the matter must now be resolved by final and binding arbitration, a process both sides said could take up to a year.

"While it has been the hope and desire of the OPOA to successfully conclude our negotiations with a tentative agreement on all issues, it seems that goal is not achievable," Lucia wrote to the city's chief negotiator, Jonathan Holtzman, adding that there were "very few tentative agreements on the issues and (the union) ... intends to aggressively pursue its positions in arbitration."

At the center of Oakland's delicate negotiations with its police union is a contract that includes generous overtime and holiday pay and what management views as excessive restrictions on officer scheduling.

Police Chief Wayne Tucker said a key sticking point was the city's effort to eliminate language in the contract that prevented the city from negotiating any "past practices" for the life of the contract.

In the current contract, which is still in effect, for example officers are allowed to work on holidays at will at 2 1/2 times pay, the union president's salary is paid by the city, and the union has used the past-practices clause to block reassignments, the city said. Such grandfathered past practices have not been approved by the City Council.

Tucker said he plans to move forward with his plan to reorganize the department along a district-captain model with an emphasis on community policing in which officers spend part of their time working with neighborhood groups in an effort to build trust and identify areas in need of heightened enforcement.

"We'll have to wait and see what the impacts will be, how the bargaining unit will be affected by the reorganization," Tucker said. "We're still going ahead with ... geographic policing. We're hoping to put together a plan that assures the citizens of Oakland greater safety.

"It's safe to say that all of the city, all the management, the council, the mayor and the administrator are united in the position that fundamental changes need to be made."

Mayor Ron Dellums "backs the chief 100 percent," Dellums' spokesman, Mike Healy, said Wednesday.

"The mayor has made clear that his vision for the Police Department is in line with the chief and he wants to see the chief's vision implemented," Healy said.

Lucia said the city's alleged claim that the contract "is impeding the chief's ability to protect the citizens of Oakland is patently absurd." He accused the city of turning the contract and the union into a scapegoat for the city's lack of ability to solve its officer staffing shortage.

In an interview last week, police officers association president Bob Valladon, who on Wednesday referred media inquiries to Lucia, said the contract under which the union is operating allows the chief the flexibility to deploy officers as he sees fit. The problem, he said, is the staffing shortage.

Oakland is down about 87 officers from its authorized strength of 803. The city last year gave Tucker what amounted to a blank check to hire the additional officers, but the department has had difficulty training candidates fast enough to counterbalance the number of officers retiring.

The department now has about five officers retiring each month.

"The OPOA has provided ample evidence that these public pronouncements (by the chief) ... do not withstand scrutiny from a legal or historical perspective," Lucia wrote. "Rather than engaging in a media slugfest on this issue, we look forward to an evidentiary proceeding to demonstrate that many of the problems befalling the Oakland Police Department are a direct result of the city's failure to adequately staff the department."