Page 16 - January 2020 FOP Magazine

2020: The same old song and dance
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The original quote, from Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s mas- terpiece The Leopard, reads: “If we want
things to stay as they are, things will have
to change.” A reference, of course, to situ- ations in which there appears to be a mean- ingful change, but many underlying fundamen-
tals remain the same.
This quote also holds true for the Chicago Police Depart-
ment. A new year (2020); new mayor (Lori Lightfoot); new interim police superintendent (Charlie Beck); and new city of Chicago corporation counsel (Mark Flessner). Yet the City continues to trample on the rights of the men and women who serve and protect its citizens.
In several past articles, I have written about one of the many unfair labor practice charges filed by the Lodge over the City’s unlawful unilateral changes to mandatory subjects of bargaining. Time and time again, the Lodge has success- fully challenged the City (at the Labor Board forum) in an effort to demand that the City must first bargain before im- plementing new policies that impact police officers.
In 2017, one such charge involved the City unilaterally modifying various Use of Force General Orders (including firearms discharge incidents, preliminary investigations and
officer-involved death investigations) without bargaining with the Lodge over its impact or effect on bargaining unit
employees’ terms and conditions of employment. Bargaining over impact or effects is about bargain- ing what the “effects” the orders have on the terms and conditions of police officers’ employment (rath- er than the City’s ability to issue such orders). In other words, what effects the orders have on how police offi- cers may be disciplined or what effects the orders have on
police officers’ safety.
I am happy to report that as the Lodge enters a new decade,
the Labor Board (finally) has issued another complaint over the charge. Specifically, on Sept. 21, 2017, the Lodge filed its initial charge (later amending the charge on Oct. 6, 2017). Subsequently, as the investigation proceeded, in March 2018 my partner, Laura Finnegan, filed a detailed position state- ment that included a review of the facts, hundreds of doc- uments, supporting case law and the Lodge’s position as to why the City (once again) violated the law.
After nearly a year of investigating the matter, the Labor Board requested information from the Lodge with regard to how the consent decree between the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago may affect the City’s obligation to bargain the use of force orders, which changed the terms and con- ditions of the bargaining unit employees’ work. The Lodge responded with yet another detailed position statement. The
PAT FIORETTO
16 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JANUARY 2020