Page 19 - FOP September 2016

tually practiced over a period of time. In essence, Roumell found that any limited payments made to FTOs in the past were not consistent or known to the city. The current CBA provides for only one half-hour of pay when there is one PPO to be trained for all the paperwork needed to be accomplished. During the hearing, the FOP did pro- vide some testimony that the city had engaged in some past practice of paying one half-hour per PPO, per tour of duty. The Arbitrator, however, found that there was no es- tablished – or consistent – past practice of the city paying one half-hour per PPO per tour of duty, and so he denied the grievance. According to the Arbitrator, “The concept of mutuality has not been met.”
The Arbitrator also noted that the method in which the FTOs prepare reports has changed over time. Now, the standard Daily Observation Reports (DORs) are comput- erized and prepared over the Department’s CLEAR sys- tem. Indeed, Roumell indicated that the preparation of reporting might not take a full 30 minutes to complete, even when one FTO is assigned a second PPO. He ulti- mately ruled: “...this is not a past practice case supporting an interpretation of Section 26.1 (D) to mean that if two PPOs are assigned to one FTO, two half-hour slips at the overtime rate by practice or contract are to be granted.”
Fortunately, Laura Finnegan, who is the attorney from our office who tried this case, came up with another ar- gument for the Arbitrator to consider. Since the CBA does not provide or contemplate how FTOs will be paid when they are assigned more than one PPO per tour of duty, any
FTO still should be entitled to compensation for working more hours than the scheduled tour of duty – as contem- plated in Section 20.2 of the CBA. This argument resonat- ed with the Arbitrator, and he agreed with this alternate theory.
Section 20.2 of the CBA provides: “All approved over- time in excess of the hours required by an officer by rea- son of the officer’s regular duty, whether of an emergency or non-emergency nature, shall be compensated at the rate of time-and-one-half. Such time shall be computed on the basis of 15-minute segments.”
Roumell acknowledged, in those instances in which any FTO spends more than 30 minutes preparing the req- uisite reports, that Section 20.2 requires the city pay those FTOs accordingly. He granted the grievance and provided that, going forward, if any FTO has more than one PPO per tour of duty to train, and it takes that FTO more than one half-hour to prepare the necessary duty observation reports or cycle summaries, then that officer should be paid overtime. The Arbitrator noted Section 20.2 also re- quires that requests for overtime have to be approved by a supervisor.
In the end, prospectively, if any FTO spends more than 30 minutes working on such reports, that FTO should prepare an overtime slip and have the form approved by a supervisor. The city should then pay the overtime in 15-minute increments. The FOP wishes to thank two of its current FTOs, Shawn Hallinan, Richard Daly and Kevin Jans for all their help and testimony at the hearing. d
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