Prospect Hts.: We have tentative agreement with cops; union says no

Prospect Heights officials announced Friday they have a tentative agreement to postpone layoffs and reinstate furloughs for the city's police force, but union leaders say the only deal is to keep talking.

The city issued a news release Friday morning saying they believe union negotiators are taking the tentative agreement back to their membership for a vote next week. However, union attorney Jerry Marzullo said there is no tentative agreement and no vote planned.

“I'm not exactly sure what we would be voting on at this point,” Marzullo said. “I met with the membership yesterday and then I met with the new village administrator just to discuss preliminaries and what her mandated authority is to begin discussing negotiations between the parties.”

Mayor Dolly Vole said if the union does not agree to furloughs next week, six officers will be laid off.

“We don't have the money to continue this way,” Vole said. “The deadline is at (City Administrator Anne Marrin's) discretion. We want them to keep their jobs. We don't have anything else to negotiate or talk about.”

The confusion, which comes two days after longtime police chief Bruce Morris' abrupt resignation, started with the city's announcement that a tentative agreement was in place.

“Continuation of furloughs through the fiscal (2010-2011) was discussed. Union members are scheduling a meeting to vote on moving forward. Agreement is pending their official vote next week,” the release states.

Union representatives discussed furloughs with Marrin at a short meeting Thursday, but did not agree or disagree to them, said Rick Tracy, secretary of the Metropolitan Alliance of Police.

He said negotiating teams from both sides agreed to get together as soon as possible.

“Once we do get to an agreement we would like to bring that back to our membership,” Tracy said. “That's as far as I remember it,”

The layoff talks come in the wake of an arbitrator's ruling last week that the union's collective bargaining agreement does not permit the city to furlough police officers. The union filed a grievance after the city began requiring all employees to take 30 furlough days a year beginning in July 2009.

“Hypothetically speaking furloughs could be negotiated,” Marzullo said. “They would have a finite future and not be precedent setting and not affect the contract because they would be a side letter in the interest of the economy.”

Vole said continuing the furloughs would save the jobs.

“What other vote would they have?” she said. “The arbitrator said we have to do layoffs. The council is trying to work with them. They came to us.”