Police commanders reject contract package

Demanding equity with school teachers, commanding officers at the Bangor Police Department voted unanimously Tuesday night to reject a contract package offered to them by the city.

“It’s very simple,” said Sgt. Frank Crowley, “we want equity with the school department.”

This is the first year that the commanding officers have negotiated a contract since they voted to unionize just this year. They negotiate separately from the patrol officers who rejected their contract package earlier this month.

The issues tying up the process are the same for commanding officers and patrol officers — wages and benefits.

Crowley is the union steward for the commanding officers, and he said Wednesday that teachers in Bangor received salary increases totaling almost 30 percent over the three years of the contract, with the School Department paying the full cost of insurance.

He said that when the police negotiating team for Teamsters Union Local 340 first sat down at the bargaining table they asked for 10 percent wage increases for the next three years. He said on Tuesday the city offered them a 4-percent increase for the first year and 5-percent increases the second and third years.

“That’s not even as much as the patrol officers were offered,” said Crowley.

The contract package rejected by patrol officers called for a 6.3-percent wage increase for top-level officers for the first year and 4-percent increases for all patrol officers the second and third years.

Contracts for city departments expired in June, and the city has not settled contracts with the Fire Department, the support staff at the Bangor Police Department, which includes secretarial and custodial employees, patrol officers and commanding officers.

A contract was negotiated with the Public Works Department earlier this summer.

Robert Farrar, Bangor’s director of administration, said the patrol officers’ contract that was rejected had been supported by Ernie Canelli, business agent for the Teamsters. He said the city had made a different offer and the police negotiating team had altered it to the 6.3-percent wage increase for top-level officers only.

“That was not a city proposal. We made a different proposal, and they restructured it and then voted it down,” said Farrar.

Farrar said he was interested in discussing wages and benefits comparable to other police departments, but would prefer not to compare police officers to teachers.

“There was not a 10-percent wage increase granted for the teachers. The 10 percent that is referred to is the total economic impact of the contract and includes wages, fringe benefits and any other economic items,” said Farrar.

He also stressed that although the City Council had to approve the School Department’s budget, it had no “line item jurisdiction.”

“In other words they can cut the total amount of the budget, but they can not tell the School Department where to make those cuts,” said Farrar.

Crowley and officer Michael DiMonaco, union steward for the patrol officers, said that Bangor was not comparable to other similar-sized cities. They said the number of qualified candidates applying for positions with the department had decreased.

“The city has no value for what we do, who we are or the job we are doing. That’s what is the real morale buster,” said DiMonaco.

Farrar said the city shared the officers’ concern about its ability to attract qualified candidates to the department, but said that other cities across the state were having the same problem.

“We recognize that if our wage and benefit package is not competitive we stand a chance of not attracting qualified candidates. But we are not the only city or town in the state, region or nation that is experiencing difficulty. That is a society problem more than it is a specific Bangor problem,” he said.

Law enforcement wages in general are not high enough, he said. The work is demanding and difficult and wages do not necessarily reflect the type of work or responsibility that police officers have, said Farrar.

Patrol officers and commanding officers currently pay a portion of their health insurance. Some employees, under the family plan, pay $30 a week for health insurance.

Crowley said teachers have their health insurance benefits paid, and he thought police officers should have their’s paid for, too.

Farrar said he was confident that the city had been negotiating in good faith and said he hoped to be able to reach agreements with patrol officers and commanding officers soon.

“Negotiations take time, and we realize that. I’d like to finish up as soon as we can and reach an agreement between the two parties. Whether that’s possible or not I just don’t know,” he said.

The next step in the bargaining process is fact-finding and then arbitration. The officers are hestitant about entering into the next step because Maine law states that wage and benefit issues are non-binding and, therefore, the city does not have to abide by the arbitrator’s findings.