On July 1, 2008, a contract between the City of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Police Officers Association went into effect and became binding on both parties.
The APOA is the entity which represents APD officers, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants. The contract, called a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), spelled out 36 provisions over fifty seven pages of text detailing hundreds of elements required of both covered APD personnel and the city's obligations to them.
While the contract went into effect on July 1, 2008, it was formerly presented to the membership in February 2008 during a very contentious meeting (perhaps some remember Lt. Paul Rees and his rather, flamboyant, suit...). At the time the department was, like it is now, struggling to keep and hire officers.
Officers were leaving to higher paying departments in droves. And if you recall, the city's paper did a full Sunday edition spread talking about this issue and how many officers had left to Aurora, Colorado. In response to this crisis, the city contracted with UNM to, you guessed it, study the the best way to retain and recruit officers.
The results of the study confirmed what everybody knew, that APD was NOT competitive in salary or benefits to departments in the region. To address this, the contract that was offered sought to bring officers up to $28.00/per hour from $19.00/per hour. This pay increase was scheduled to occur over a series of years and the contract was effective over those years beginning on July 1, 2008 and ending on June 30, 2011.
The results of the study confirmed what everybody knew, that APD was NOT competitive in salary or benefits to departments in the region. To address this, the contract that was offered sought to bring officers up to $28.00/per hour from $19.00/per hour. This pay increase was scheduled to occur over a series of years and the contract was effective over those years beginning on July 1, 2008 and ending on June 30, 2011.
While the mayor gets to spend the city's money, the City Council decides how much money he gets. Upon being presented this multiyear contract, the council confirmed the funds would be there and ratified it.
This is an important distinction because city has contractual expenses and discretionary expenses. The mayor obviously has to comply with contractual obligations first. Or so a prudent business person would think.
But of course, the first thing RJ Berry did with this contract and its obligations was to cast it aside. And ever since RJ has been in office, despite the contract being legally binding, he stopped the raises where they were and even reduced officer wages and increased healthcare costs. He even hired John Martinez, from Management Associates to come in and block negotiations offered by the APOA to address fiscal issues. While RJ wouldn't even negotiate, he was happy to pay Martinez over $500,000 in consulting fees (and last week he accused the APOA for being the reason why negotiations had failed).
But now Court of Appeals Judge Timothy Garcia called RJ out on his arbitrary action. In a decision rendered last week, Judge Garcia ruled against the city and found that the city indeed had sufficient funds covering the contract despite RJ's position that the city did not and that RJ acted illegally.
Judge Garcia stated, "[R]ather than opening the CBA for economic reasons the Mayor unilaterally chose to exclude the CBA salary increases from the proposed budget...the [mayor's] reasons and goals do not legally justify a departure from the city's contractual obligations..."
In other words, the mayor lied and cheated.
Here in 2013, we are faced with APD's WORST manpower crisis in its history, and officers again leaving in droves to other departments that still have higher and better wages and benefits. This crisis is a direct result of RJ Berry's unlawful illegal conduct.
We realize that unlike our Eyes, many officers in APD were not even officers when this contract was ratified. We offer this little bit of warning: we are told, RJ wants to induce officers to come to APD with hiring bonuses. Sure they'll get paid like they did last time.....once a liar RJ, always a liar.
P.S. The economic ramifications of this decision cannot be underestimated. In this mess caused by RJ is the fact that ALL current and former officers that were part of this contract on July 1, 2008 stand to benefit in the payment of back pay. That's about 800 officers per year in annual wages since RJ broke the contract and committed his illegal actions....
We realize that unlike our Eyes, many officers in APD were not even officers when this contract was ratified. We offer this little bit of warning: we are told, RJ wants to induce officers to come to APD with hiring bonuses. Sure they'll get paid like they did last time.....once a liar RJ, always a liar.
P.S. The economic ramifications of this decision cannot be underestimated. In this mess caused by RJ is the fact that ALL current and former officers that were part of this contract on July 1, 2008 stand to benefit in the payment of back pay. That's about 800 officers per year in annual wages since RJ broke the contract and committed his illegal actions....
We are told the APOA chose not to endorse any candidate for mayor. Remember that silence equals consent president Lopez and vice-president Willoughby. With your silence you endorse RJ.....
24 comments:
Again...police officers, you ARE the APOA, one and all. Your elected board and President are there for you. All you have to do is show up to the next meeting and have enough for a quorum and make a motion to endorse someone for Mayor and second the motion, then vote. The leaders of your APOA are obligated to carry out your wishes because YOU ARE THE UNION!
I would think that by not endorsing RJ they are making a statment and not a silent one.
Back to the issue at hand, if the APOA memberhip and their family and friends don't vote for either Heh or Dinellim nothing changes.
President Lopez and VP Willoughby are not the APOA. Rank and file are, either shit or get off the pot! Put up or shut up! Do something about it or stop complaining etc etc ad nausem...
Actually the members can form there own committee in opposition to the shenanigans of Willoughyby de Lopez... Vwhy would the cops bother showing up when the board acts like its own club and excludes rank and file? And they stood by and DID NOTHING while Joey used our money like a personal bank account? And yeah, they don't even endorse one of their own who's running for mayor. So yeah, sitting their silent is bullshit.
In the 1990s UNM was busted by the federal government and the NM Legislature for violating federal labor laws. As a result UNM restructured every job on campus. UNM tried to decrease the pay of the UNM police officers to the same pay that security guards earn. UNM police are state police officers and they formed their own union to fight UNM. They took UNM to court and after ten years of winning court battles the UNM police union won in the NM Supreme Court. UNM had to pay the police officers ten years of back pay and UNM raised tuition
in order to cover the cost. UNM uses the same anti union busting John Martinez to negotiate contracts and fires union employees. Gov. Martinez has hired John Martinez to bust the state employee unions. He told the unions to tear up their contract last year and they are still negotiating the contract. Gov. Martinez is spending $500,000 to keep the state employees in low paying jobs and to privatize the state government and to fire employees without due process. UNM and the state can't fire employees without due process because of the 14th Amendment in the U.S Constitution.
One reason why NM is so poor and pays lower than the national wage is that it's a plantation state. Read Dave Cargo's biography and you'll learn a lot about New Mexico. It's in the public library.
I think that APD is going to win this suit, because Berry breached the union contract. Berry tried to decertify the city unions when he came into office, but he couldn't do that only the union members can vote to decertify the union. His administration is very ignorant when it comes to labor law. This is going to cost the city more money, because the city will owe all police officers back pay. I'm wearing my "Fire Mayor Berry" shirt everyday when I run at UNM. We need to get rid of him, because I've never seen Albuquerque look this bad and I'm starting to miss Marty. I never voted for Chavez, but things were better when he was mayor.
The City used to have multiple temp agencies. Now they only use Adecco. This is how all these people who couldn't pass nepotism rules or minimum requirements are being brought in without advertising the job. This is also how all the double dippers are being brought back. In exchange for hiring whoever Adecco is told to hire Adecco gets a cut of the salary.
Is there any truth that Mayor Berrys wife is partial owner in Adecco? And if not who owns it? Who is profiting from hiring the friends of City workers?
I am betting that the DOJ is totally overwhelmed with the utter can of worms they have opened up here, and the countless rabbit holes they have to follow that this administration is responsible for. Hopefully charges come for Schultz and gang when this is all over. Nothing would smack a lesson down on these defiant criminal dickheads more than orange jumpsuits for every single one of them.
The library has been using Addeco, and several other temp agencies to staff the libraries for years now. They fill in the spaces and gaps that used to be offered to city workers for overtime back in the day. Now they are more than half the workforce. The library is trying everything in its power to oust the long term workers out the door. The library admin penalizes city workers for going over 40 hrs of sick leave in a rolling calendar year, they try to intimidate us into not putting in for overtime by telling M level staff that they are not entitled to it (even though they are in the M series union). They are committing timesheet fraud by having us put down working hours that we don't work, some branch managers treat their workers with outright anger, a certain manager is on the verge of losing it, will not let us talk to one another or to customers....asks staff weird personal questions...these are Berry 's people! Thank you Mayor for getting us these weirdo managers with no . Managerial experience or skill set!
The first commentor on this topic makes a lot of sense. There seems to be a lot negative feelings over the fact that the APOA chose NOT to endorse any candidate. From comments posted here, I think it's probably pretty safe to assume that membership attendace at scheduled union meetings is pretty low. Is it a possibility that the union officials chose not to endorse any candidate because of lack of input from the membership to define which candidate they (the membership) wanted to endorse? I read numerous comments here about scheduled meetings not having a quorum attendance necessary to vote on anything. Appears sort of "weak". If I were the President and Vice-president of your union I would be really hesitant to announce an endorsement that could result in a full membership meeting of disgruntled disagreeing officers. Just like the first commentor noted: you people are in control of your union. If you choose not to TAKE control of it, you have no legitament bitches, no matter what the outcome.
Let's look at the minutes from the meeting in August and see what the fuck happened shall we?!?
so did IAFF local endorse Dinelli? and if so, why did the APOA not?
AFSCME endorsed Dinelli as well.
I've spoken to the employees of Addeco about how they work for the amount of time allowed by the Federal Labor laws and then they are laid off. Some of these people have been working for Addeco doing city jobs for two years on a minimum wage salary. They told me that Addeco charges the city double the amount that they earn, so the city isn't saving money. Also the tax payers end up paying for these temporary employees unemployment and government assistance because you can live off of $8.50 per hour.
One temporary employee told that he thought Addeco was an out of state company. This means that if the city is paying out of state contracts for its work force most of the money is being sent out of state and not spent in the Albuquerque economy. This is a tax payer rip off.
It would seem that it would be better for the city's economy and save money if the city got rid of Addeco and hired the workers like the city did before Marty privatized the city jobs.
This would help the Albuquerque economy because there would be more city employees being paid above min wage and they would be able to spend their money in Albuquerque. The old line that privatizing government will save money by not paying retirement or benefits is a huge con job, because the tax payers end up paying for the temp employees health care, food stamps and section 8 housing. While some private company provides min amount of services and sucks the money out of the city.
People have noticed that the city looks run down since Berry came into office. Maybe this has something to do with Addeco. I've gotten on the city councilors case about this rip off and I've asked them why is the city wasting money this way when the services these temp agencies provide are not up to par. They sigh and tell me "I know".
Besides getting rid of Berry the public needs to become aware of these temporary agencies contracts and how much it is costing the city, so the public can pressure the city into getting rid of the temp agencies. Most of the public is not aware of these contracts and I'm sure that they would be angry if they found out about the whole mess. This is a rip off.
One thing that I did think of is that if the police union wins in court then the city will also owe back pay to all city employees. Berry is a disaster for the city.
One of the big things we never see or hear about is that the officers funded a large portion of those raises by giving up longevity pay. I think the public and Dinelli/Hey need to be reminded of that and make it an issue.
4:49,
Because they are cops, and they don't have any balls. They can't even stand up for themselves. For instance, they let a cowardly pink skinned, spineless, punk boy of a fucking jelly fish and weakest excuse for a man alive like Schultz bully them for all these years. That motherfucker couldn't fight his way out of a playpen, yet they let him run amok all over their rights. No cohesion. No loyalty. No sense of my brother first. The majority look out for number one and are just happy that it isn't them on the chopping block. Totally disgraceful.
Try making a decision you punk bitches, that's why we elected you! What good are you there sitting around all day whining because you're "memmmmbershippp won't steep up". waaaaaaa! You're not cops anymore everyone knows that. So try acting like leaders, take the hit, pick yourselves up and move on. Endorse Heh or we will get someone in there who can make decisions. You two really need to rethink what you're doing. Clowns.
There's only two things (well besides willowby and Lopez) in the middle of the road, yellow lines and roadkill.
Its probably to late for any endorsements. Candidates already have their propaganda printed and ready for mailers. So much for unity.
Time to investigate Addeco...we can probably do a better job at that than the investigator General. They do nothing about internal complaints!
We hired an Inspector General? I thought it was still vacant.
We need to start helping where we can. Every financial "reallocation" in every City Dept send it to the FBI office. If you receive state funds, like law enforcement protection funds, you cannot reallocate it at your will. So those bragging about buying furniture from Hon because they have a city contract when the grant was for something like overtime at the labs needs to be turned in to the FBI.
Every reallocation of federal funds, missing petty cash or cancelled evidence disposals or use of grant money to pay wages to work NRA or Baker to Vegas or other similar bull shit send it to the local FBI office.
Every other incident of public corruption send it to the FBI!!!
All these people will accept an unmarked envelope containing print evidence of corruption. All you have to do is put a note in the envelope saying you wish to be anonymous and where you got the info (for example the grant number and name). They will honor your wish.
Lets bombard them with so much mail we keep the local post office overwhelmed. Lets do this not just for APD, not just for AFD, but for every dept. Transit, Sanitation, Library, Family and Community, Senior Affairs, Everyone, you know what you saw now its time to step forward as a group and tell the world we want our City back!
FBI Albuquerque
RE: Public Corruption
4200 Luecking Park Ave NE
Albuquerque, NM 87107
Awesome!
Ok so what if the library for example were to take several hundred if not more books out of their system and these books were paid for by taxpayers mind you,and the library turned around and sells these books to an organization in say for example, Africa, to educate that population,and the third party broker,if you will, pays the library for these books.Where is that Money going? I pack around 6 boxes per day that go out and I've never heard of our branch library getting any money. Where would one go if they were inclined to report this enrichment of administration? I'm guessing they are the ones getting the money in their pockets,it's certainly not going into the general fund.Ask Dean Smith the library director...investigation needs to be done.
I would say to notify the inspector general but Berry and crew made sure to run him out and are making sure not to replace him so they dont get caught. I will find out for you.
Thx!
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