Staff
After announcing last week it would be shutting down the Treaty Three Police Service and laying off all of its officers within 45 days, the Treaty Three Police Services Board executive seems to be giving employees a second chance to agree to their requests.
“We are very pleased with the latest news releases put out by the union indicating that they now understand that the debt is attributed to the underfunding of our police service,” indicated a recent press release from the board.
“More importantly, they expressed a willingness to move forward to keep our employees employed and our communities safe.”
However, the board still wants the union to comply to the requests laid out at a June 17 meeting.
These requests are:
•Drop the Canada Industrial Relations Board challenge, grievances and unfair labour practices against the Treaty Three Police Services board of directors (Service);
•Maintain registration under provincial legislation to form a union provincially, while dropping the unfair labour allegations; and
•Have a regional union representative personally negotiate with the Treaty Three Police Services management team to formulize new collective agreement under provincial labour laws and stay within the funding levels provided by both levels of the government.
“It would serve no purpose to sit down and negotiate a new agreement on a respectful basis with labour law challenges and unfair labour allegations outstanding on either party’s part,” the press release noted.
“The decision to move forward and prevent the closure of our police service is clearly in our employee’s hands and we await their reply,” it added. “We have faith in our employees in that they will make the right and timely decision so that we can move forward collectively.”
The press release also explained the cause of the deficit, which they note was not attributed to financial mismanagement or irresponsible spending of funds, but instead rather funding being cut and no increases in budget.
“With a 2012/2013 fiscal year-end deficit of $640,000, and although our service initially paid the arbitrator’s imposed OPP salary rates Jan. 1 to Mar. 31, with the uncertainty of any new monies coming in, we directed the Chief of Police to reduce the salary increase level to one-half of the imposed arbitrator’s decision,” it noted.
They indicated that they lobbied all levels of government to increase the funding to their operating budgets, but were not successful in their attempts.
“To say the least, reality set in and to keep from incurring further debt, or being irresponsible and not doing anything, a painful but necessary decision had to be made to have our officer’s salary revert back to pre-arbitrator’s rates effective June 10,” the board stated.
“We made it clear to the local union executive that our budgets are fixed and we need them to understand our fiscal situation,” it added.
