Officers
decertify
union
By CARL E. HARTDEGEN
Staff Writer
WESTFIELD – Westfield patrol officers have voted to end their decades-long relationship with a national police union, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, and have instead created their own coalition to represent them.
Officer John Blascak, a 15 year veteran of the force and formerly the president of the local IBPO chapter, said in a recent interview that the change benefits the city’s patrol officers.
He said “cost was an issue for us… we were unsatisfied with the representation” provided by the IBPO.
Blascak said that the contract between the officers and the IBPO expired in July, 2011, when the officers’ contract with the city also expired, and he said “we took an initial vote in July to see if there was interest to leave” the IBPO.
He said that the union members voted to leave the national union and the officers began a lengthy process with the National Labor Relations Board to decertify the union.
The NLRB eventually mailed secret ballots to all 58 officers who had been represented by the IBPO and Blascak said that the returned envelopes were opened in the presence of him and two other Westfield officers.
When the votes were counted, 46 officers had voted to decertify the IBPO, while only two voted to retain it. One officer voted for no union representation and one ballot was unsigned and therefore contested.
“Out of the people who voted, it was pretty much a landslide” he said.
The officers subsequently organized an independent union, the Westfield Patrol Officers Coalition, which, starting on Jan. 1, 2012, will “represent and act as exclusive bargaining agent for the members of the WPOC in all matters relating to wages, hours and standards” Blascak said. The new union encompasses not only the officers assigned to the patrol force but also all the officers of the same rank, such as those officers assigned to the detective or traffic bureaus.
Both Blascak and the coalition’s vice president, Dermot Hurley, who had been vice president of the IBPO local, agree that there is a significant financial benefit with the independent unit.
Hurley said “our top concern was financial” and Blascak explained that not only will the officers’ weekly dues payment be reduced by two dollars but said “our treasury will be significantly higher” and the union will be able to support local youth programs, charitable organizations and politicians.
He said that the patrolman’s union had been sending the parent organization $38,000 in dues annually, while receiving back from the IBPO only $1,920 annually for the local’s operations and donations.
The IBPO has supported national candidates who don’t really support police officers, Blascak said. He went on to say that, due to the change, “We can support local, state or federal issues if we choose to” he said whereas “the causes the national union will support don’t necessarily benefit us.”
Blascak said that the new union is likely to support candidates for local and state offices as those races most affect the members.
Det. Brian Fanion, who Blascak said was a major backer of the change along with Hurley and Officer Chris Coach, said that the change eliminates a possible conflict between IBPO locals.
He said that formerly the patrol officers and the superior officers were both represented, via separate locals, by the IBPO.
The interests of the two groups are not always identical, he said, and although “it doesn’t happen often” there can be conflicts between the interests of the two groups.
By breaking away from the IBPO, Fanion said, that concern can be eliminated.
Blascak said that the coalition has retained a Springfield firm of attorneys at a significantly lower cost than that provided by the IBPO and said that the firm is currently negotiating a new contract for the officers with the city.
He said the firm also represented one officer in a disciplinary issue, pro bono, in the interim period after the IBPO contact was not renewed and before the coalition was organized.
Carl E. Hartdegen can be reached at [email protected]
