By Law Proposals
A post about the By Law Proposals.
The first proposal is in regard to Sergeants being allowed to serve on the Board. This is a hot button issue for certain people who don't think someone who is essentially a manager for the City can fairly administer contract issues for Blueshirts. Our thoughts?
The first proposal is in regard to Sergeants being allowed to serve on the Board. This is a hot button issue for certain people who don't think someone who is essentially a manager for the City can fairly administer contract issues for Blueshirts. Our thoughts?
- As we understand the Rules, even if this did pass, it's unenforceable. It's not going to apply retroactively, so the two sergeants on the Board keep their jobs until the next election.
- This rule is in direct conflict with the National Charter and would be a loser in court. At least two of our National Officers are bosses. The FOP deals mostly with small Departments where entire Departments are represented by a single bargaining entity - Chicago is an anomaly in the great scheme of things.
- Retirees can't vote on active labor issues and are excluded from having a voice in anything applying to the active labor contract. So are the Sergeants on the Board. We think the process would be better spent addressing the fact that there are 6 or 7 retirees on the Board who can't do anything for the Blueshirts. The retirees vote as a bloc and wield undue influence on the ability of any Board to actually address active labor issues. THAT is going to be the biggest internal strife we face as retirees quit earlier and live longer. See the next proposal for more on that.
The second proposal is regarding retirees. This is going to tick off a bunch of our retiree readers, but its a bad proposal. Thanks to previous labor contract giveaways by the Nolan & Podgorny crew, the FOP is now required to repay the City the salaries of it's officers who are "inside" guys. This "brilliant" sellout by Nolan and Co. completely hamstrung multiple unions at once. Anyone want to guess where we might have been able to spend the millions now earmarked for payment to the City? Pension Legislation maybe? Other legal or labor reforms to secure our rights? Our opinion is if you want to belong to the FOP, you shouldn't be costing the organization money. Nolan already gave away the store and his right hand man is attempting to return to power to finish the job.
We don't hate retirees. You served with honor for years and we hope you all live to be 100 years old to get every penny you didn't get while working for the City. But giveaways are going to destroy the union and are actually costing us in terms of what legislation the union is able to lobby for. We are headed for a civil war of old vs new unless we come to an understanding.
We don't hate retirees. You served with honor for years and we hope you all live to be 100 years old to get every penny you didn't get while working for the City. But giveaways are going to destroy the union and are actually costing us in terms of what legislation the union is able to lobby for. We are headed for a civil war of old vs new unless we come to an understanding.
posted by SCC at 12:01 AM
25 Comments:
First, and formost, FOP is a fraternal organization for police officers. The key term here is fraternal. They are not a union, no matter what most of you think. The national lodge is Fraternal and the state and local lodges must adhere to this. Fraternity is the most important aspect. Labor issues are secondary.
Secondly, it was not only Nolan and company who sold us out. We were sold out from day one by John Dineen. FOP has been selling us out since the very first management contract that they gave to the city.
Any sane person who thinks that FOP is anything other than a Fraternal group, like the Moose, the Elks, or the American Legion should get their head examined.
FOP is not, and never has been, a union, a labor organization, or a bargaining agent. They are, by the very definition of their own national charter, a fraternal organization.
As a supervisor myself, (low level, only a sgt) I'm ashamed that my fellow sergeants did not do the HONORABLE thing and resign upon being promoted.
By all means, remain fraternal members of the FOP, but there is an organization called the PB&PA that represents the supervisors. Join that and do some work for your FELLOW SUPERVISORS and leave the policy making for your subordinates in their most capable hands.
Honor.....does anyone believe in that anymore?
Now I will admit I have partied to squabble over various pro an anti FOP issues and this is one of the most logical posts I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time. On these basis at least to me this would be and is a worthwhile debate to address. As we say for the good of the order.
I'm awaiting the responses for a balancing factor. I will never serve inside FOP. So I'm free falling towards retirement, matter of fact this issue in my opinion would not do disservice to most of us if we decided to enact a change.
As to the board checks and balances are needed but how much of a good thing is another issue. At least in the terms of how many retirees sit including the blocs they have potential to create.
I have never been in full favor of Sgt's. on the board nothing personal but I do feel their stipend funds should go to Blue shirts the represented body and strength of the union. Some feel combining Sgt's with PO's can hurt Po's due to the theory of, them against us views in discipline issues. Creating a watered down version of Blue shirts point of perspective and affecting them adversely. This may and may not be a legitimate concern but it's a concern none the less.
I'm not a member of fop but I am a union dues paying city employee.
STAND STRONG BOSSES CANNOT BE ON THE BOARD ! IT'S A CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
To the board members that made Sgt (voluntarily of course) congrats to you. But to be a good leader which is the position you choose, have the balls to step down, show your workers you recognize and respect the position you last held on thier fop board. Don't disgrace it now by letting shirts/management run it.
To any blue shirt/collared worker who stands by idle and allows this to occur, you deserve everything you get 5 yrs down the road.
Thank God I got that Norma Rae moment out of the way, squad is going back to sleep now. Peace
Bravo for addressing these FOP issues and hopefully getting a dialogue going among us all. Management isn't going to listen to the rank and file - so us whining,kvetching,complaining is a waste of time UNLESS we have representation. The first thing we need to do to "get what's ours," is to fix Lodge 7. Our lodge must be our watchdog,representation and voice.
Sgts. should not be on the Board of Dirs. They are members of the PB&PA. If the Sgts. do have a right to be on the Board, do they have a right to run for FOP election as Sgts. Donahue can't have his cake and eat it too. Are the Sgts. in or out?
Retirees should be given free dues. The cost of covering the retirees could be partially born by the ELIMINATION OF ONE FOP FIELD REPRESENTATIVE. Over 5,000 retirees could be taken care of versus 1 FOP Field Representative. The Lodge functioned for years with only 5 field representatives versus it current 7. Also, the Sgts. have representation. The retirees do not. The PB&PA dues not make its retirees pay dues.
If Donahue and crew are advocating the Sgts. should be on the Board, then they should be more vocal about it. If Donahue wants retirees out - he should say it. People are sick of them sitting the fence.
As a recently retired guy with 30 years of service, all I can tell you is that the only thing I care about at this time is health insurance (which is an across the board issue)and cost of living increases. As of 2013 retirees (and spouses) will no longer be insured. Some guys never had the quarters for SS. Something for you young guys to think about cause you will be there before you know it. It might not be a bad idea to have some represenation although I don't know what good it will do. For health care, we should nationalize and bring the King Dick to his knees. Now back to the paper and my second cup of coffee. I need to plan my day!
I think you are all missing the intent of the white shirts staying on the board. After listening to one of them speak I think his intent is to try and get the PB&PA ousted and have white shirts go into the fop. This way he can continue to draw that deluxe salary you give him. The heads of the sgt.'s lt's and capt's organizations only draw their city salary not a gold braid salary. Granted they are responsible for far less #’s than the FOP. This last Sgt’s election the president was ousted in favor of a younger candidate the view of many was they didn’t want someone who is retiring representing their interests.They wanted someone who was going to have to go through what they go through. I have seen the same cycle so many times at the FOP going all the way back to Dineen. About 18 months before your next election the presidents’ second in command will suddenly turn against him and start the attack he will put together a “citywide team” made up of like minded “reformists” of course they all will be current board members and unit reps. They will preach on the evils of the current administration and how they really fought it all their terms but were constantly defeated, and if you will only vote for them they will be better. And every election the rank and file go for it. The only way for you to improve is to get involved. You can’t run for office if you don’t attend a % of the meetings. ATTEND at least that way your options are open, meet other non board members at the meetings who are of like mind and most of all when you clean house CLEAN HOUSE oust the entire board. This is the only way you will ever gain control back. Oh yeah and anyone with 5 yrs on and working in the puzzle palace should be banned from the board
One other thing the other day I had an occasion where I wanted to speak to a unit or watch rep. 3 districts and the detective division later I found one.Where the F*** are your district level reps? some units don't even have one! Must not be too bad out there for you all if you can't even find someone mad enough at the powers that be to be a unit/watch rep.
As a Fraternal group for police officers, any member can run for any office. If the Superintendent of Police is a member of the FOP and wants to run for office he can. Any office. If he wins, he is in. He cannot be involved in any labor issues, but labor issues are scondary to the FOP. It is first and foremost a Fraternal organization. BTW, if a boss is a member of the FOP, he is entitled to all of the benefits of membership, except contractual rights.
The sergeants on the board won their seats in a fair election. They deserve them.
And to all you people who are complaining about this, are you the same ones who keep whining about the FOP not doing enough to make the promotion process to management easier and fairer? Are you the same ones who cry about FOP not doing enough about merit promotions to management. You cannot have it both ways.
New York City Pension Fraud
The New York Times reports:
Every year since 1999, New York City has reported that it has all the money it needs to pay for the pensions that have been promised to city workers.
With the retirement plans said to be financially sound, state politicians have happily showered city employees with generous pension enhancements - annual cost-of-living increases, holiday bonus payments, early retirement with full benefits - that are the envy of private-sector workers, whose pension benefits have eroded.
But a close inspection of city pension records shows that the funds committed to the plans may fall well short of the city's promises to hundreds of thousands of current and retired workers. They look fully funded chiefly because the city has been using an unusual pension calculation that does not comply with accepted government accounting rules. Even the city's chief actuary, who helps produce the annual reports, says the official numbers are "meaningless" when it comes to showing the plans'financial health.
The chief actuary, Robert C. North, has prepared a little-noticed set of alternative calculations showing that the gap in the pension funds could be as wide as $49 billion. That is nearly the size of the city's entire annual budget and the equivalent of the city's publicly disclosed outstanding debt.
The existence of a big gap between the city's future obligations and the resources committed to meet them does not mean the pension funds are about to run out of money. But it does mean that New York City is promising its current employees future benefits it might not be able to provide without big tax increases or major budget cuts. When such a reckoning might occur, if at all, is hard to predict.
Pensions are now one of the city's fastest-growing expenses. In recent years the city's required contributions to its pension funds have more than quadrupled, to $4.7 billion this year from $1.1 billion in 2001.
Enron really did run a more honest operation.The amount of outright fraud here is beyond belief.Politicians promise government workers pensions by fraudulently selling sunny budget numbers to the public.Today's politicians might not be around for the disaster in the making.Of course government workers vote for politicians who promise them compensation they couldn't get in the private sector.Nothing is more dangerous than government workers getting pensions.Do you really trust Moody's and S&P to put an accurate bond rate on NYC's muni bonds? For a great book on why "democracy" promotes this kind of massive fraud that wouldn't be tolerated in the private sector read Hans Hermann Hoppe's Democracry The God That Failed.
Steve Bartin
The only thing that will stop/ change the FOP is if the Feds come in and take over the city/Police Dept.. I am all for that as well!!
The fire union represents most supervisors and they get along pretty well. In unity there is strength and we have to be strong. We should ALL be together. Fire people and police people. Blue shirts and white shirts. Send a message to Richie too. I believe we once tried it but Nolan and Markie bailed out.
8/21
6:50am
PBPA never sends out stickers or books to retired or disabled members that any retired Sgts I know are aware of. None of them get the newsletter either. But what they always get every year is an envelope full of raffle tickets to sell for the golf outing. PBPA president or the whole PBPA is no better than the FOP. PBPA president spent about a week in patrol then his guy Fat Phil moved him to a spot. Forget it FOP, PBPA all the same shit. Take care of those on the board fuck the dues paying members. Worst lawyer I ever saw was PBPA guy RR who is gone now what a piece of shit.Remember neither of these are AFL-CIO unions and because of that we will never have any power over the city.
Ideally, supervisors and blue shirts would be in the same union and have the same vested interests. If only it were so. But it's not. I worry that the combination of a different union/collective bargaining contract along with their positions of authority puts their interests at odds with ours. We should be one union but this is a dangerous way to get us all on the same page. I fear that the "page" will wind up being one patrolmen aren't on at all!
I have reached the point where I dismiss out of hand anything the lodge directors suggest and first examine the ramifications of doing the exact opposite. Then I go back and seek the real motive behind their spin. It is simply a time saver. Their motives are no longer suspect but proven regarding the lengths they will go to in their pursuit of power/money. The last straw was, or should have been, Nolan selling us out,to wit: lodge officer's dept. salary paid by rank and file. The fake-ass citywide reformers election was, I guess, stabbing the camel after the straw that broke his back and everything since... some sick necrophilia visited upon the camel's corpse.
BTW-Fillmoreranger is right. They have and will use the same sophomoric diversion tactic of a new group of "reformers." Pretty embarrassing that a bunch of cynical coppers who've seen it all keep falling for such an amateurish ploy. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." (That's a Who song, for you young’uns!) Maybe we wont fall for it this time, after all, hope springs eternal! HA!
You know, there are a lot of us that have been around maybe a little too long and feel that we are powerless. Due to being screwed so many times by so many different regimes. I am usually one of these but I think it's possible to fix at least SOME of this shit! The difference is that we didn't have this blog in the past. Nobody talked the truth and they fell for partisan party lines because they had no acdess to IMPARTIAL information. Even though SCC seems to disagree with me on some issues and monitors this site, he has posted my rants every time (almost. One was a bit too "bleach" on the fire!) That's impartiality. We don't have to choose bewtween being do-gooders or isolationists. Just start talking shit, bitching about things with your co-workers and for us, that's discourse! Complain to each other and that way the guy who doesn't even know what's going on will then know and pass it on to others.
My brain hurts.
3:20 you are by far the biggest moron I have ever run into on this board. You're asking to get it stuck in your ass for even the most minor infraction.
Wake up stupid! The fed could care less what we get paid, pension, or healthcare issues!
You must be a dumbocrat!
One of the Sgts. on the Board was a merit promotion.
Who proposed the lodge ammendment keeping supervisors off the board that the current lodge board want us to vote AGAINST? Is it possible there are some involved in lodge affairs that actualy have our interests at heart? More likely that someone's interests happen to coincide with ours but still...
As 5:33 said: "To any blue shirt/collared worker who stands by idle and allows this to occur, you deserve everything you get 5 yrs down the road."
For or against, I hope people turn out at the meeting and make an informed decision. Bitching about it after it's a done deal won't help.
Wayne, you were making sense there until the very end when you started naming names. We've stated before, names aren't going to be allowed on this board unless we feel it's appropriate, open public knowledge or germane to the subject at hand. Re-type it without the names - say "The FOP Board" or something similar. We aren't going to be your stalking horse for a run at the Citywide people. We certainly aren't going to follow you into the fever swamps of conspiracy thinking.
SCC:
Here goes:
Your reference to "bosses" being on the state and national fop boards in an attempt to cast a favorable light on sgts currently on Lodge 7 Board is misguided!
Why?
the critical difference and most basic:
The State FOP and National FOP "ALLOW" for "bosses" on their boards as stated in their respective Constitutions:
Lodge 7 Constitution already states "only active members in good standing BELOW THE RANK OF SERGEANT can be candidates . . ."
therefore FOP Lodge 7's Constitution is "in conflict" with state and national constitution!
Why doesn't the current "leadership" of Lodge 7 Board propose an amendment to bring our Constitution, regarding "bosses" being on the board, as to be in compliance with the state and national?
Because the "current leadership" prefers to rule by self serving policy to reward certain members of their "team",
The "current leadership" of Lodge 7 would not dare to submit an amendment to ALLOW "bosses" to run for office because the lucrative salaries they enjoy would end and god forbide some of them would have to return to the street.
more to come watch mailboxes
wharej603
The naming of names would not lead to a defamation suit because as you know "truth" is the best defense!
Correct Wayne. Truth is the best defense. Unfortunately, some of what you said wasn't true, no matter how much you wish it to be. So we're actually protecting you from yourself.
Your welcome.
SCC
i guess you can decide "what is true and what is not"
Your statement
"Unfortunately, some of what you said wasn't true"
Is your reference the post above?
or
the post you decided not to publish in my "best interest", in affect protecting me against myself
I asure you, you can provide me no such protection and you should let me hang myself but we both know that is not going to happen!
The fact that I am willing to identify myself as opposed to any other poster including you indicates WHO NEEDS PROTECTION
NOT ME
Stay tuned tommorrow big day before the FEDERAL JUDGE!
Wharej603
And so interest in FOP bylaw ends not with a bang but with a whimper. Helooooo? Anyone out there? (echo...)
Ah well, it's become yesterdays news. Unfortunately, it's tomorrows ass-fucking!
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