Police Sergeants Union Rejects Emanuel Contract Offer
By Chuck Sudo in News on Mar 12, 2013 5:40PM
It’s back to the drawing board for the Emanuel administration’s attempts to reach a labor deal with the union representing Chicago’s police sergeants after the Chicago Police Sergeants Association’s members rejected a labor deal negotiated by its executives and Emanuel aides last month.
The deal would have given sergeants a 2 percent annual pay raise, boost the retirement age for sergeants to 53, increase their pension contributions to 1 percent by 2015 and increase health care contributions while cutting cost of living adjustments every other year. The two sides also agreed at the bargaining table to call for legislation in Springfield that would given the city a seven-year window to increase efforts to fund police pensions instead of find the $700 million necessary to balance both police and firefighters pensions by 2016.
The Emanuel administration crowed the deal would serve as a “road map” for other unions — namely the Fraternal Order of Police — to emulate. The CPSA’s rank and file, however, rejected the contract by a 7-1 margin. FOP President Mike Shields, who urged the sergeants to reject the deal, told the Sun-Times Emanuel’s “divide and conquer” strategy clearly didn’t work.
“The sergeants realized that the pension portion of this deal was completely unconstitutional. This was not a deal that benefitted them. It only benefitted Mayor Emanuel,” Shields said Monday. “The mayor needs to stop declaring war on the police and declare war on the bad guys. We’ve got a major crime problem, and him fighting Chicago Police officers certainly does not help when guys show up to work.”
CPSA President Kim Ade concurred his union’s members “didn’t want the pension legislation tied to the collective bargaining agreement.” Emanuel released a statement to media that expressed his “disappointment” in the vote and, despite it, “I intend to move forward with reforming our pension system in order to protect taxpayers and keep our city financially secure.”
According to the Sun-Times, an Emanuel spokesman blamed the vote on “outside forces,” Shields and the FOP among them.