The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee), August 27, 2005, Saturday

Copyright 2005 The Tennessean
All Rights Reserved
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)

August 27, 2005 Saturday 1st Edition

SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B

HEADLINE: Teamsters make new bid to be Metro cop union

BYLINE: CHRIS JONES

BODY:
Petition drive will launch Wednesday
By CHRIS JONES
Staff Writer
Less than a year after narrowly losing an election to become the union representing Metro police officers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is mounting an aggressive campaign to muscle out the Nashville Fraternal Order of Police and force a new election.
In what has become a nationwide battle between the two union groups seeking to woo public-safety employees to their organizations, Teamsters officials are launching a petition drive Wednesday to attract a majority of Metro's 1,200-plus officers and decertify the FOP.
In September, the FOP fought off an attempt by the Teamsters to become the bargaining unit for officers, winning a bare majority of the 1,032 ballots cast. The FOP garnered 524 votes, beating the Teamsters by only 16. Currently, more than 1,000 Metro officers are dues-paying members of the FOP.
Teamsters officials said that some officers have become dissatisfied with the FOP in the past year for not fighting aggressively enough for a lucrative new pension plan Metro officers sought.
That discontent offered the Teamsters another opening in Nashville, said Jesse Case, a Teamsters official from Washington, D.C., who is a key organizer of the Nashville takeover attempt.
"The officers approached us to come back," he said.
A week before the petition drive, the war of words between the two groups had already started to heat up. Teamsters officials accused Nashville FOP President Ed Mason of selling out officers by aligning himself too closely with top city officials and department brass.
Mason has said he is concerned about Nashville's police officers aligning themselves with an organization that has historically been linked with organized crime.
"If that has not changed, that could be a conflict of interest," Mason said.
Metro police Chief Ronal Serpas said through a spokesman that he is staying neutral and doesn't expect the split among officers on the union issue will affect the department's work. Serpas will seek direction from the City Council on what guidelines to follow if the Teamsters are chosen to represent officers, department officials said. Metro police Lt. Calvin Hullett, a former president of the Nashville FOP who is helping to lead the campaign to bring in the Teamsters, said the FOP did Metro officers a disservice by agreeing too quickly to a three-year contract with less pay and benefits than many officers hoped for.
A key provision officers sought was a pension increase that would pay retirees 75% of their salaries if they retire after 30 years of service, with annual increases after that. About 200 policemen and firefighters staged a demonstration in May to demand that benefit and higher wages.
Signing a contract too quickly destroyed the officers' bargaining power, Hullett said. "When they accepted that offer, they closed the door for negotiating that pension plan for the next three years," he said.
FOP officials said the contract they agreed to does not formally accept the pay raises offered by Metro government and allows the union to reopen negotiation on financial matters in 2007.
The pension provision was unlikely to be approved in a year when Metro government was cash-strapped after increases in spending for schools and health care, FOP officials said.
Some officers said they prefer to be represented by the FOP, which works specifically with public-safety workers, unlike the Teamsters, which represents employees in many industries. "I rather have police officers fight for my benefits than union workers who don't know what I go through on the job," said officer George Patonis, 36. "The way I look at it is they (Teamsters) are coming down here to collect a paycheck."
The Teamsters represent officers in more than 1,200 law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. The organization recently started a new law-enforcement division aimed at increasing its ranks of police officers. Nashville has been named the first of its target cities under that initiative.
In recent weeks the union has begun contacting Metro officers through e-mail and telephone calls, seeking their support.
After next week's membership push in Nashville, the Teamsters have scheduled union training sessions here Sept. 13-14.
But the Teamsters aren't waiting to begin representing local officers. Last week, the union held a rally to denounce a Metro police policy of requiring that officers returning from military duty undergo two days of physical and psychological evaluation.
Labor expert Richard Hurd of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., says the Teamsters' moves appear to be part of a national strategy to get more public workers, because many unions are losing members in the private sector.
"Private-sector unions are declining and are going toward public employees," he said.
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Chris Jones can be reached at 259-8209 or chjones@tennessean.com.

GRAPHIC: CREDIT: PHOTO BY MICHELLE MORROW , STAFF: Lt. Calvin Hullett, a former president of the Nashville Fraternal Order of Police, is helping lead the effort to have the Teamsters replace the FOP in representing Metro officers. A Teamsters official says the union was invited by officers who are dissatisfied with FOP contract negotiations.