Police Contracts in New Jersey: An Overview
Police Contracts in New Jersey are collectively bargained and negotiated agreements between law enforcement agencies and their respective unions. These contracts typically outline the terms and conditions of employment for law enforcement officers, including salary levels, pension and health benefits, work rules, job responsibilities, discipline and internal investigation responsibilities, grievance procedures and a procedure for the assignment of work duties. They must be understood by both law enforcement officers and their supervisors, as they contain mandatory procedures and obligations which must be followed during the administration of a law enforcement agency . Once a party is required to negotiate a particular term of employment, whether it be salary, work rules, job security procedures or other subjects, case law requires that the negotiations take place in good from and in the spirit of mutual cooperation, with the objective of reaching a meaningful, workable agreement. In the absence of an agreement, the terms and conditions of the contract may be set forth on a decision by an Administrative Law Judge and the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission ("PERC") pursuant to the negotiations or submissions made by the parties. It is therefore incumbent upon both sides to understand the mandatory terms of the contract so as to best present their position during contract negotiations and before PERC or an Administrative Law Judge.
Important Provisions in New Jersey Police Contracts
A valuable action in reviewing police contracts is to identify the common elements or themes with regard to the terms of the contract. With regard to the State of New Jersey, the most commonly found provisions in a collective bargaining agreement are as follows: (1) Salary, (2) Benefits, (3) Work Hours, (4) Retirement.
With regard to salaries, the base salary is often subject to numerous contractual provisions such as merit increase, longevity increment, and overtime compensation. Some contracts also contain a salary guide which sets out the "base" salary for each year (period of the contract) through a series of increments. For example, if an officer’s base salary in 2015 is $50,000.00 and the officer has worked for 5 years, the officer could be eligible for a merit increase to $55,000.00 depending on the terms of the contract and/or individual bargaining unit. Another common provision in the salary section is the entitlement to longevity payments. If an officer works in the bargaining unit long enough, he or she will receive an additional salary increment based on his or her length of employment. In addition, many contracts stipulate that "non-regular" or "out of title" work will be compensated by payment at the overtime rate. For example, if the person spends more than 2 hours in a work day working on a "special assignment" the officer will be eligible for overtime compensation. Frequently this payment is limited to 2 hours, and time over 2 hours is unpaid.
Similar to the salary provision found within the contract, benefits vary from one contract to another. Typically, benefits include but are not limited to deferred compensation plans, health care benefits, sick leave buy out options, holiday pay, and deflation of health insurance premiums if possible.
The work hours provision is usually consistent across many if not all contracts. The lone differentiation between contracts may be the shift trading clause that allows officers to trade shifts as they see fit. This clause allows maximum time flexibility for a unit to be operational, while giving the officers the time off that they desire.
Finally, retirement provisions are often times consistent with other units, or entire departments. Many police departments participate in the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), while others participate in the Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS). Most contracts will require the employees to contribute a percentage of their salary to the pension in order to fund their retirement. The amount that must be contributed to the pension plan is set by statute.
Union Involvement in New Jersey Police Contract Negotiations
In the Garden State, public employee unions have played an essential role in ensuring that law enforcement officers have representation at the bargaining table. This representation can significantly influence not only wages and salaries, but also the general terms and conditions of employment for any given contract. In fact, many private sector gradations do not even have collective bargaining agreements where a union is involved. Public Sector unions, such as NJ State PBA for instance, are comprised of active and retired law enforcement officers from various municipalities. (The majority of NJ Police Officers fall within a formal bargaining unit which a local union is included in. An example would be line officers and Sergeants making up a rank-and-file union, collectively bargaining with the municipality). In fact, on an annual basis, nearly a quarter of a million public employees in New Jersey are represented within unions. PERC governs the administration of these unions within the State, which is an acronym for the Public Employment Relations Commission. Under the employer-employee Relations Act, the key duty of a union is to advocate for its members. However, unions also serve as the legal representative of the employees, which assists in negotiating and reaching a settlement between the municipality and the bargaining unit. The law further requires a union to notify its members on the status of the negotiations. The contract between the municipality and the union’s members must be approved by the by the union membership. Once agreement has been reached, it is the responsibility of the union to ensure that the terms of the contract are enforced.
Recent Trends and Developments in New Jersey Police Contracts
During this period, the focus has shifted from benefits and wage freezes to compensation by other means such as longevity, retention bonuses, and stipends that have been negotiated into police contracts in recent years. As contracts come around for renewal, the retention bonus is often named as an increase in compensation. While an employee has to be employed for a certain number of years in order to be eligible for the retention bonus, it is not necessarily tied to longevity. For the purposes of calculating other benefits such as pensions, it is treated as regular compensation.
With arbitration of police discipline and contract negotiations, there has been an increase in of the amount of reconsiderations granted. In order to get a reconsideration , an injured party must show that a new circumstance or fact has arisen that would warrant a reconsideration of the determination. This has had a ripple effect going in the opposite direction. Further, cases are being reevaluated for procedural errors. The trend is to lean towards issuing retroactive pay increases.
The issues presented in arbitration that affect police contracts date back to the dawn of collective bargaining. Many of those issues are still present in current negotiations. The use of arbiter’s awards for wages, health benefits and other statutory benefits are often used as a guide to shape collective bargaining contracts. The awards of other municipalities in and around the original contracting municipality along with comparable collective bargaining agreements aid in determining whether or not factors are reasonable.
Legal and Public Issues in New Jersey Police Contracts
While many challenges to police contracts in New Jersey focus on their potential unconstitutionality or unreasonableness, New Jersey police contracts have been the source of the majority of controversies surrounding police accountability. In addition to concerns over provisions that conceal police misconduct, many New Jersey towns have incurred significant legal and financial liabilities due to provisions in their police contracts.
New Jersey municipalities have already spent millions of dollars paying out claims based on abusive actions by individual police officers. However, the scope of public concern is primarily focused on provisions that prohibit the disclosure of information about police disciplinary actions. These concealment provisions relate to both internal disciplinary actions by police in instances where the information sought could have been protected by civil service regulations and to decisions issued by quasi-judicial bodies such as the Office of Administrative Law.
Towns such as East Brunswick and Morristown have been singled out in the public for these provisions. Prosecutors and the public have questioned whether large settlements with members of the public involved in abusive incidents have resulted from these provisions, which were allegedly negotiated by the police unions at the expense of both the municipalities and the public.
More recently, the New Jersey legislature has taken action on the issue. In 2014, New Jersey enacted N.J.S.A. 40A:14-149. This statute created a presumption of disclosure of these records in response to OPRA requests. It also required that a municipality maintain a list of nondisciplinary orders and reprimands which would be available to the public upon request. Municipalities were granted a three-year window during which they could act by ordinance to modify or prohibit the release of specific disciplinary records. Effective May 2017, all previously agreed to restrictions on the disclosure of police disciplinary materials were void.
Undeniably, there are compelling interests in keeping the details of police disciplinary actions private. However, the lack of transparency that has been the norm for decades lacked sufficient checks to ensure accountability was not sacrificed for secrecy. The new legislation addresses these issues even as it poses new concerns about the manner in which municipal ordinances are used to eliminate the statutory presumption of disclosure for specific documents.
Police Contracts and Their Impact on Communities
The influence of police contracts extends beyond the negotiating table, affecting myriad facets of police departments, public safety and budgetary considerations. As these contracts are the direct result of negotiations between police unions and municipalities, and given that each contract represents individual priorities for each municipality and department, the interplay of these contracts can impact not only individual communities but also the mutual interests of neighboring communities.
For instance, an overall increase in annual salaries for police officers in one community may require the department to reduce the number of officers to be hired in the coming years. This reduction may place additional strain on neighboring communities, but the net benefit is that there will be increased police presence and enforcement in one community as its neighbors bear the increases in public safety and policing responsibilities.
Consider the possible scenarios involving more than one community: commensurate overall cost increases or fewer hires might negate any perceived extra costs incurred or salary increases doled out in a neighboring department. In this scenario, while the individual departments will see increased costs, the cost to taxpayers will be mitigated through a shared reciprocity in services .
Despite the fact that police officers are unable to strike, the municipalities that employ officers are able to tap into the roles of negotiating officers represented by unions. However, police officers do not have the right of binding arbitration, and the municipalities retain an interest in their respective taxation and fiscal planning, lacking the mandate that requires neighboring communities to mitigate additional costs incurred by their adjoining municipalities. As such, municipalities are forced to negotiate with police unions and the officers in their employment without more robust methods of cost mitigation, such as a duty to hire or prioritize the hiring of adjoining municipal employees and competing for officers in the area.
The reuse of data and information provided in local and county-wide police data and planning initiatives often help to facilitate cooperation amongst departments outside of negotiations and bargaining. While police departments and forces are not required, as a general rule, to cooperate with one another, they often share situational information related to police activity, traffic accidents, issues or crimes of interest, equipment, vehicles, and other resources. Similarly, many departments share police academies and training.
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