SALISBURY – County leaders voted last week to ratify a three-year contract with Wicomico’s Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 111.
Last week, the Wicomico County Council voted unanimously to a three-year bargaining agreement between the county and the police union. County attorney Paul Wilber said the terms of the agreement resulted from the collaborative efforts of negotiating teams representing Wicomico County, the sheriff’s office and FOP Lodge 111.
“This has been a long process,” he said. “We are here today to hopefully bring it to a conclusion.”
Attorney Kevin Karpinski told council members last week the collective bargaining process was first approved by voters in 2010. Since that time, the county has entered into three agreements with the union.
“The last agreement was a five-year deal, and that is sort of on the longer side of agreements for the FOP,” he said. “Ultimately, a three-year deal was reached with the thought process being we wanted a shorter window given the current economic status.”
The bargaining agreement approved last week covers a range of issues, including clothing allowances, discipline, pensions and overtime.
Karpinski noted the agreement also includes a change to the department’s wage scale, which features competitive wages for deputies and more consistent step increases.
“It has 7% title growth up through the rank of corporal and then 5% for sergeant and first sergeant, so there’s greater growth on the lower end of the scale and then it lowers by 2%,” he said. “And then there’s step growth of 3% at each step on the scale itself.”
Karpinski added the agreement also extends the timeline for settling grievances before an arbitrator is needed.
“The parties agreed 15 days really was not enough time to go from one step to another,” he said. “The hope would be to resolve these grievances without escalating to another step because there hadn’t been sufficient time to work through the grievance. So the period of time was increased from 15 to 30 days. If it cannot be resolved, an arbitrator would be selected within 15 days.”
While noting the lengthy bargaining process, Karpinski told council members the finalized agreement satisfied the needs of both the county and FOP members.
“I think this agreement makes the sheriff’s office competitive in obviously one of the most important areas that can be provided by government, which is public safety,” Karpinski said. “And I think it addresses a lot of the concerns that were left unaddressed, or were ambiguous, in the last agreement that was done five years ago.”
After further discussion, the council voted 7-0 to implement the collective bargaining agreement. The term of the agreement begins on July 1 and ends June 30, 2024, with automatic year-to-year renewals unless either party gives written notice of a desire to terminate or amend the document.
