Page 18 - APRIL 2019 FOP MAGAZINE

Lodge 7 fights unilateral tuition reimbursement changes
Some things never change. The City continues to engage in its ongoing practice of unilater-
ally making changes to the parties’ expired collective bargaining agreement without
first bargaining with the union. Since the parties have been at the bargaining table
for more than a year, the City is required
to maintain the status quo on all mandatory subjects of bargaining until a new agreement is
reached. An issue is a mandatory subject of bargaining when it involves wages, hours and terms and conditions of employ- ment — changes that impact how police officers are reim- bursed for tuition is a mandatory subject of bargaining.
On March 21, the Department issued a revision to Employee Resource E07-02, titled “City of Chicago Tuition Reimburse- ment Program and Verification of Academic Credentials,” which became effective the same day. The main reason for the modification is to change when participants must repay the City for tuition reimbursement privileges. In essence, if a mem- ber either resigns or “retires” within a certain amount of time after receiving a degree, the member will be required to repay all or most of the tuition costs that the City had reimbursed the member toward the degree. Under the predecessor Employee
Resource, only a voluntary resignation triggered any repay- ment obligations. The current modification marks a dras- tic change from the clear and plain language that exists
intheagreementandwhathasbeenapastpractice. Specifically, Article 24 of the current agreement provides for tuition reimbursement to police officers for extra-departmental education, subject to specified conditions. One provision that has remained unchanged for many years, even after the parties bargained over the cur- rent agreement, includes Article 24(I), which specifically states
(emphasis added):
If an officer obtains an undergraduate or grad- uate degree with the assistance of the tuition reim- bursement program, and the officer, within one year of obtaining such degree, voluntarily resigns from the Department, all tuition costs (100 percent) reim- bursed to the officer by the employer for obtaining such a degree shall be repaid to the employer. If the officer voluntarily resigns after one year, but less than two years after obtaining the degree, the officer shall repay one half (50 percent) of the tuition reimburse- ment to the employer. If the officer does not complete the degree program and voluntarily resigns from the
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Labor Report
18 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ APRIL 2019