Page 18 - February 2017

New year, same old tricks
With the start of a new year, the Depart- ment wasted no time resorting to its old tricks. On Jan. 1, as we all celebrated the be- ginning of 2017, MLAS sent the Lodge’s Pres- ident an e-mail, stating the Department’s intentions to implement, unilaterally, its Complaint Register Matrix Guidelines, which set forth new parameters for discipline to be imposed for several
ciplines all bargaining unit employees and therefore is a term and condition of employment that cannot be uni- laterally implemented by the Department.
As I have written in the past, the State Labor Relations Act guarantees that police officers have the right to bar- gain collectively with their employer over a collective bargaining agreement, and once bargained, those terms cannot be changed unilaterally during the duration of the agreement. As we all know, the current agreement expires on May 31. The De- partment violates the act by unilaterally chang- ing the status quo on mandatory subjects of bar- gaining without giving the union the opportunity to bargain. An issue is a mandatory subject of bargaining when it involves the wages, hours and terms and condi- tions of employment — discipline or any changes which impact how police officers can get disciplined clearly is
a mandatory subject of bargaining.
By attempting to implement a Complaint Register
Matrix Guideline, the City unilaterally has impacted the
PAT
PAT
FIORETTO
FIORETTO
general categories of misconduct.
The Department previously had circulated
FOP
Lab Rep t
drafts of the guidelines without any indication
of an implementation timeline. The Lodge consis- tently had advised the City that implementation of any such guidelines was a mandatory subject of bargaining which must be addressed in the course of negotiations for the successor to the current collective bargaining agreement. Indeed, the Lodge had sent several written objections, the most recent one in September 2016. These new guidelines directly impact how the City dis-
18 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2017