The Sun Sunnyvale's Newspaper Officers ask for grievance arbitration City agrees to study issue By Justin Berton City officials met with representatives from the Sunnyvale Public Safety Officers Association for the first time since a heated election in November, but little progress was made in negotiating a new contract at the Dec. 14 closed-door session. Claiming that the City Council offered binding grievance arbitration as a conciliatory prize during the campaign, union officials approached the meeting expecting to hear an offer they wouldn't refuse. The offer never came. "We fully expected them to honor their word," said union president Kelly Fitzgerald. "Now that the campaign is over, their word is no good." City Manager Robert LaSala said the city used the meeting to put a proposal on the table to end the dispute, but declined to comment on the details of the plan. LaSala said the proposal did not include binding grievance arbitration. After residents rejected the officers' bid to use binding arbitration as means to settle the labor dispute on Nov. 3, the union is now asking for a less sweeping type of arbitration: binding grievance arbitration. Grievance arbitration allows a third party to rule only on disputes that are raised on issues already within the con raised on issues already within the contract--no new issues or items outside the contract can be brought up. Though city officials did not make an offer to allow grievance arbitration, City Councilmember Jim Roberts did move to study the issue by putting it on next year's legislative calendar. "It's a dodge," Fitzgerald said. "They just don't want to give up what they offered during the campaign." During the campaign, then Mayor Roberts often said that grievance arbitration was a possible solution to the contract impasse. But now Roberts says his comments that suggested grievance arbitration was an answer to the labor dispute were his own and did not represent the official stance of the council. "What I said was that grievance arbitration was perhaps the right way to go, and to my word, I placed it on the legislative calendar. Now, we are going forward. I defy anything and anybody to show me where I said anything else." Fitzgerald said the union is planning to pack City Hall chambers with supporters at the Jan. 26 council meeting to "confront the council on their promises." "If you needed to study it, why not do it in April '97 when we asked for it then," Fitzgerald said. "They are trying to weasel out of their commitment." Fitzgerald said the union asked for grievance arbitration last year but was denied. David Nieto, director of human resources and the lead negotiator in the talks on the city's staff, said the city has a longstanding policy not to offer grievance arbitration. "We have never offered binding grievance arbitration, nor would we. We have always maintained that advisory arbitration is the arbitration vehicle or process that the city chooses." Nieto noted that during the campaign, "many things were said," and added that councilmembers were not in a position to negotiate on behalf of the city. "No one councilmember can offer that or give that to them," he said. Now, Fitzgerald said, the city and the officers union may have to bring in an advisory arbitrator for the first time in the city's history. The advisory arbitrator would rule on the remaining contract issues that have been the sticking points between the two sides. Fitzgerald said he was not at liberty to discuss those issues. Whatever the advisory arbitrator rules, the City Council will have the power to uphold or overrule the decision. The legislative study will explore the effects of grievance arbitration on all city employees, Roberts said, not just the officers union. The city's Human Resources Department gave the issue its No. 1 priority and should return a finished study to the council by the end of the spring. "If we can find a way to do it, then we should do it," Roberts said. [ Back to Contents Page | Sunnyvale Sun Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 23, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.