MARYLAND – Following an angry reaction from Hagerstown elected officials, representatives of fire and police unions said Wednesday that they are seeking the right to binding arbitration if needed in contract negotiations, but do not want to cause any undue economic stress to the city.
“We hope we never have to use binding arbitration,” said Hagerstown Police Department Officer Tom Bartles, a spokesman for the police union with the American Federation of State and Municipal Employees, Local 3373. “If we run the city into the ground, we don’t have jobs ourselves.”
The police union and the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 1605, which represents city firefighters, started circulating petitions throughout the city in March seeking support for binding arbitration.
Binding arbitration means that if a union and the city cannot agree on terms of a contract, the matter would go to an arbitrator to be settled.
For the petition drive to be successful and recognized by the city, the unions had to collect signatures from 20 percent of the city’s qualified voters, City Attorney Bill Nairn said in a telephone interview Wednesday. That amounts to 4,818 signatures, Nairn said.
More than 9,000 signatures were collected, said John Murray, a Hagerstown Fire Department fire apparatus operator who is a spokesman for the firefighters’ union.
Not only do the petitions seek the right for the unions to have binding arbitration, they also seek to have the two labor groups officially recognized by the city’s charter, which is currently not the case, Bartles said.
The city has several options in dealing with the petitions, including agreeing to allow the unions to have binding arbitration, city and union officials said.
Or the issue could be decided by city voters in a special or general election, they said.
Councilman Martin E. Brubaker said during a Hagerstown City Council work session Tuesday afternoon that a special election could cost at least $60,000.
But Murray said the firefighters’ union does not want to saddle the city with the cost of a such an election.
The time frame for organizing a special election now means it would be held in mid-September, Nairn said.
But county election officials have said that would be a bad time for an election, since they will be getting ready for Maryland’s general election on Nov. 4, according to Nairn.
A binding arbitration election cannot be held during the Nov. 4 election, because such a ballot question must be posed in a regular municipal general election, and the next one for the city is in 2016, Nairn said.
Now that the city has been presented with the 9,000-plus signatures, it must compare the names against a list of city qualified voters from the Washington County Board of Elections to determine if they are valid, Nairn said.
Nairn said city officials are looking into how to verify the names, including perhaps doing it by computer.
Some city elected officials reacted angrily to the petition during Tuesday’s council work session.
Brubaker feared cost repercussions to the city from a system in which labor contract details could be determined by an outside party. He alleged during the meeting that “hired guns” had been used to orchestrate the petition process.
Murray said although city union firefighters went door-to-door to collect signatures, he said a firm known as FieldWorks, which specializes in petition drives, was also contracted to help with the process.
Murray said Wednesday that binding arbitration is “not this scary albatross at all,” and it is not a road map to higher taxes.
Bartles said city firefighters and police officers, as well as other city workers, have been sensitive to the struggles of the city as it went through the recession.
He noted that the police department was entering its fifth year of not getting any cost-of-living or step increases before the city and fire unions agreed to contracts recently that included pay increases.
“We’re not trying to break the city,” Bartles said.
Bartles also said pay issues are important for the police department now, because it has been having problems retaining qualified employees.
Dave McMillion is a reporter for The Herald-Mail. He can be reached via email at davem@herald-mail.com.