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FAIRBANKS DAILY NEWS-MINER
No Ruling In Police Union Lawsuit
Friday, February 25, 2005 - By MARMIAN L. GRIMES
Staff Writer
Attorneys on Thursday argued for a court judgment in the
lawsuit between the City of Fairbanks and its police union
over benefits for retired employees rehired by the city.
City attorney Herb Kuss contends that the suit should be
dismissed.
Jim Gasper, attorney for the Public Safety Employees'
Association, wants the court to order the city to pay the
benefits.
The union, which represents nearly all of the employees at
the Fairbanks Police Department, sued the city in December
2003 alleging that the City Council breached the union
contract.
At issue was money paid to a small number of senior police
officers who retired from the department and then were
rehired. They were allowed to do so under a bill passed by
the Legislature several years ago. The bill allowed people
subscribing to the state Public Employees Retirement System
to retire, start collecting their pensions and then be
rehired by their former employers. These employees would
continue to receive their retirement benefits and could
elect to receive retiree health care.
Given that scenario, the city offered to rehire retired
employees and, in a letter of agreement, if they opted out
of city health insurance and pay $4 an hour toward a
retirement account. Six police officers took the city up on
its offer.
But in August of 2003, the City Council voted to stop making
those hourly payments and cut money for the payments from
its 2004 budget as well.
The union filed grievances in August 2003. The lawsuit
alleges that the city did not respond to those grievances in
a timely fashion. The union contended that because of that,
the city was then compelled to resume the payments and make
retroactive payments. When the city didn't, the union filed
the lawsuit, which demands that the payments be reinstated
and that the city pay for missed months as well.
"If the employer does not respond within its time frames
then it conceded the grievance is valid," Gasper said on
Thursday. If the city disagreed with that point, it could
have contested it through the contract grievance provisions,
he said, but it didn't.
He argued several other points at the hearing, including
that the City Council's funding authority doesn't give it
the authority to breach a contract, but at the end he came
back to the city's lack of response to the grievance.
"The default provision of the contract either has meaning or
it has no meaning," Gasper said.
However, City Attorney Herb Kuss said the timeline for
response to a grievance doesn't start until a conciliation
meeting between the city and the union. He offered a letter
that he said came from the union to the city in late
September 2003 that referenced a Sept. 22 meeting between
the parties. That Sept. 22 meeting constituted a
conciliation meeting, he said, and the timeline should have
started then. But, Kuss said, that letter also indicated
that the union wanted to bring the issue before arbitrators,
so the city didn't respond further. Then the union filed
suit.
"The city was basically caught off guard," Kuss said.
The issue of default should not even be before the court, he
said. "This is a matter that really should have gone to
arbitration."
Superior Court Judge Randy Olsen gave the city and the union
10 days to file additional documents and is expected to make
a ruling after that.
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