HomeMy Public PortalAbout06-09-2015 Manager Bullet points for Fire negs• The Watertown Town Council is the Town's legislative body and the Town Manager serves
as the Town's executive branch. The Town Council is responsible for appropriating the
funds that the Town Manager needs to operate the Town's various departments and services.
• The Town Council's role in considering the appropriation request to fund the Fire arbitration
award was the same role it plays when the Town Manager brings forward other appropriation
requests such as voluntary agreements with unions, requests for capital purchases, the annual
operating budget and other Town expenditures.
• One of the Town Council's primary functions is to decide whether it will appropriate the
Town's limited funds for a particular expenditure or budget item. Regardless of whether a
collective bargaining agreement has been reached voluntarily or through arbitration, the
Town Council, at all times, has the statutory obligation and authority to determine whether
the Town's limited financial resources will be used to fund that particular agreement.
• The submission of the unsettled Fire contract negotiations to the arbitration panel designated
by the Joint Labor Management Committee ("JLMC") was not a voluntary decision and was
not done by agreement.
• The Union filed a petition with the JLMC requesting mediation and when the mediation
efforts did not produce an agreement, the JLMC required the parties to go to arbitration.
Under the circumstances, it would have been a violation of G.L. c. 150E if the Town had
refused to participate in the arbitration hearing.
• At no time did the Town Manager or the Town Council ever agree to submit the contract
dispute to arbitration, so any assertion that the Town Manager or the Town Council agreed to
a process and then refused to abide by it is completely false. In fact, the Town Council was
not even involved in the arbitration proceedings.
• At the time that the Union requested to go to arbitration, the Town's contract offer to the
Union, had it been accepted, would have granted Watertown Firefighters monetary increases
over a span of four (4) years (7/1/09 — 6/30/13) totaling approximately 6.5%. The increases
for the other Town unions ranged from 5.0% to 6.5% over the same four (4) year period.
• The Union rejected the Town's offer and instead was seeking increases over that same period
that totaled approximately 19.0%.
• Had the Union accepted the Town's pre -arbitration offer, Watertown Firefighters would have
been the highest paid Firefighters as of the June 30, 2013 end date of the contract in
comparison to Firefighters in Arlington, Belmont, Canton, Dedham, Melrose, Natick,
Saugus, Stoneham, Waltham and Woburn.
• Had the arbitration award been funded by the Town Council, it would have given Watertown
Firefighters a total pay increase of approximately 9.5% over the four (4) year period which
still would have been much higher than the 5.0% to 6.5% range of total increases that the
other Town unions received for the same period.
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• Approximately two dozen communities have rejected arbitration awards in the past,
including Northampton, Saugus and Holbrook in recent years alone.
• The Boston Globe reports that the state Firefighters Union has been trying to legislatively
change the arbitration process for more than a decade now in an effort to strip away the local
legislative body's discretion to decide how a municipality's limited financial resources and
tax dollars will be spent as it relates to collective bargaining and to instead, delegate that
authority to arbitrators who are neither residents of the community nor the elected
representatives of the community's voters.
• Since the rejection of the funding request of the arbitration award, the Town has made
multiple offers to the Union for a new contract and they have all been rejected by the Union.
• If the Union had accepted the Town's most recent offer, it would have continued to place
Watertown Firefighters among the highest paid Firefighters in relation to Arlington,
Belmont, Canton, Dedham, Melrose, Natick, Saugus, Stoneham, Waltham and Woburn.
• The Town Manager and the Town Council each have a responsibility to do what they believe
is in the best interests of the community as a whole.
• The Town Manager remains ready, willing and able to negotiate with the Union over a new
collective bargaining agreement that is fair to the taxpayers of Watertown, the Town and the
Union and its members alike, but it ultimately takes two parties to reach an agreement.
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