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CHICAGO LODGE 7
Official Magazine
President’s Report
FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE CHICAGO LODGE #7
EXECUTIVE BOARD
JOHN CATANZARA
President
Michael Mette
First Vice President
Daniel D. Gorman
Second Vice President
Fernando Flores
Third Vice President
Rob Noceda
Recording Secretary
Jim Jakstavich
Financial Secretary
Dennis McGuire
Treasurer
Dean Angelo Sr.
Immediate Past President
Sergeants-at-Arms
Nenad Markovich Frank Quinn III Daniel Sheehan
Trustees
Harold Brown John Capparelli Pablo Claudio Frank J. DiMaria David DiSanti Mark P. Donahue Patrick Duckhorn Tim Fitzpatrick Dan Goetz Ken Hauser Tom Lonergan Brock Merck Steve Olsen Monica Ortiz Dan Quaid Ron Shogren Daniel G. Trevino
Field Representative
Andrew Cantore
No time to rest
A recent weekend “off” started with traveling to Middletown, Pennsylvania on Satur- day morning to stand with Lodge 7 Second Vice President Dan Gorman, Third Vice Pres- ident Fernando Flores, Recording Secretary Rob Noceda and more than 250 members of the National FOP as we presented our endorsement to President Trump. Flew home early Sunday morning, repacked a bag and drove to Louisville to help the Illinois FOP Critical Incident Team support police officers there going around the clock responding to riots following the verdict in the Breonna Taylor case.
Sleep? We don’t need no stinkin’ sleep. If our sisters and brothers can work 12-hour shifts with no days off, the least we can do is work tirelessly, too. We promised we would do whatever it takes to improve working conditions. We will. We are.
That, of course, brings us to the status of the contract. Following the most recent, quote/unquote, negotiation with the City, our strategy was to tender our counterpro- posal outside the firehouse. (The location was symbolic, and I will get to that.) The thought was, and still is, that we must be treated the exact same way as the sergeants. Let’s get that financial package
done. Then, we can deal with everything else after the fact.
The City’s contention that we don’t have our finger on the pulse of reality is political gibberish. Only
a small percentage of the city population wants discipline reforms tied to our contract. Even people who say they want reform don’t necessarily understand it, and that proves it’s such a kneejerk reaction. They have no idea about our back story. I think we have an obligation to get our narrative out and get the financial package done separately. And we will not rest until that happens.
One of the simple mindsets going in is that we are going to take the same package the firefighters received. We are not. (Now, you see the significance of the firehouse press conference.) One, that was too low. Second, even though we are all first responders, I feel we have a much more difficult and dan- gerous job. You don’t see anybody leaving the fire department to become cops, do you?
Yes, we both put our lives on the line when we bust through that door. But firefighters don’t have to put their job or their freedom on the line with every response. So we need to be compensated beyond what the firefighters get.
That, coupled with the current economic climate, makes it unrealistic to stick to the demand of my predecessor. We have tweaked it to 2 percent retro for 2017, 4.5 percent for 2018 and 2019 and 3 percent for 2020. We will see how that pans out.
Maybe the City negotiators lost a little sleep when I threw down the 17-percent increase, which could be cut in half for those members who want to have the residency requirement waived. Or maybe they thought I was joking.
It’s not a joke. We campaigned on how young this department has become. The fact that you took this job knowing you had to live in the city has become a big issue. It’s going to get harder to find viable candidates to take the job, and even harder to get minority candidates, unless they can live outside the city.
Either way, 17 percent or waiving residency would certainly improve working conditions. It saves the city a little money without really draining tax revenue. I realize that property tax breaks for living in the city are still being discussed, but in the ever-evolving battle to make conditions better for members any way we can, this could be the most neutral idea to achieve that goal.
Regarding the contract, the City is in for a rude awakening. In followup negotiations, we are only going to discuss our proposal, and not Article 6. We are standing firm. We will go back to arbitration if need be. It’s not what we want. It’s not what the City wants. They can demand it now, but an arbitrator is not going to gut our discipline protections from the contract.
They are dreaming if they think they can implement conditions of the consent decree without com- ing to us to negotiate. And if they are unwilling to negotiate, they are not going to force things down our throat. If the City does not like the path we’re on, we dare them to demand arbitration.
Now, I know this contract is keeping many of you awake at night. There are always going to be of- ficers who are thinking only of that retro check. A lot of them don’t see the forest for the trees. Don’t forsake your career just for the money. We understand it, but it’s not the big picture. We are here to represent what’s best for the majority of members. They will thank us for that one day.
Remember, we have established the moral high ground. You are absolutely doing the most incred- ible work as a police department in the most incredibly trying times in the profession. It’s not just the past five months. You have been subjected to this nonsense for the better part of the past five years.
We have blown the narrative out of the water because we are moving this department forward in a
JOHN CATANZARA
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