LABOR RELATIONS
Collective Bargaining Annual Report:
Fiscal Year Sept. 2015-Sept. 2016
We who serve on the NJ State PBA Collective Bargaining Committee hope that everyone has had a
productive year. As we begin the new fiscal year and
face the challenges it will bring, we can take comfort
in that we are well prepared to meet those challenges.
The state received 197 collective bargaining
agreements
for Fiscal Year 2015-16 (FY15-16). This
GEORGE F.
represents a 28-percent increase over last year. ConO’BRIEN
gratulations to Essex County for submitting the
greatest number of collective bargaining agreements of all the counties. A total of 18 new contracts were submitted
by Essex County, which is doing an excellent job with getting its information into the state in a timely fashion. There is one county that
failed to submit any new contracts for FY15-16. Not included in these
totals are the 31 contracts downloaded from the PERC Burlington
County website, which are mostly FOP jurisdictions that I normally
would not receive.
It is really important for all State Delegates to submit their newlynegotiated collective bargaining agreements, not only for the rankand-file unit but for the SOAs as well. When submitting a new
contract, it is essential to your members that you include a signed
copy of the agreement. Inasmuch as the NJ State PBA maintains each
agreement on file for future reference – perhaps for a retiree or
current member doing research or when a governing body decides
to alter retiree benefits – a signed contract always gives a representative the ability to make a stronger argument. As is reported at each
New Delegates Seminar, it is the responsibility of the State Delegates
to submit their collective bargaining agreements, both for rank-andfile and SOAs, pursuant to Article VII, Section 1, sub-section c. of the
NJ State PBA Constitution and By-Laws. We are improving and
getting better, but we still have some work to do to get each Local’s
contract into the state office.
Because the State PBA has been collecting collective bargaining
agreements since 1985, it now has accumulated thousands of agreements. As you can imagine, it takes several filing cabinets to store that
many documents. The PBA is currently in the process of acquiring
new equipment to convert each of these agreements to a PDF file
and enter them into a new database. This will preserve the contracts
from the failings of a paper document, preserve the current
condition of the collective bargaining agreement and make it more
efficient to retrieve them. We are looking forward to starting this project by the end of this year.
I would like to make mention that the Collective Bargaining Committee is collecting data on all contracts from Locals that have successfully negotiated a reduction of health benefits co-pays. To date,
the PBA is aware of five Locals that have reduced their co-payment
from 35 percent to 1.5 percent and two Locals that negotiated a
reduction down from 35 percent to 20 percent. If anyone would like
further information please contact the state office.
Updating this data also applies to the wage portion of the spreadsheets. As in the past, the wages are separated into base salary and
salary with longevity. These groupings are to be found in separate
documents.
22
NEW JERSEY COPS
■
OCTOBER 2016
In both instances where a change has taken place in the wage
guide – i.e. the number of steps to maximum wage – changes in the
longevity benefit, such as moving from a percentage increase to a
fixed dollar amount or longevity being removed or lowered by
increasing the number of years to attain the next step, this information can be found in the comments section at the back of the
financial data. All this information is available to the Locals at no
cost. To receive this data, th