Switching unions, is old contract protected/adopted?

[realpolice]

A vast majority of our police department's officer membership is considering changing unions. However, our existing union heads are scrambling to scare members into not switching. Their latest scare tactic is telling members if we switch unions our existing contract with the city will not be honored, and we will lose our benefits, salary, vacation, etc. We are currently under an expired contract, and are in the state of Michigan. The union we are considering says this is not true, that they simply take over the existing contract. Can anyone tell me if this is true or not, and where to get the specific information to assure members. Thanks.

[danninator]

The contract is between the Officers and the city and is gained via the union but not for the union. It should still stand. I know a few of our guys are FOP even though the majority of the dept is PBA and thats who bargained for them. They still are covered regardless.

[mcsap]

The contract is between the Officers and the city and is gained via the union but not for the union. It should still stand. I know a few of our guys are FOP even though the majority of the dept is PBA and thats who bargained for them. They still are covered regardless.

As far as I know, I agree with the above. The existing contract is between the officers and the dept. The union is actually the officers association , not the FOP.

[Curt581]

I'm not so sure. A problem comes in because your contract is expired.

Nearly all Union labor contracts contain language in the event of expiration that says "this contract shall be in force until a new contract is ratified to take it's place", but it's enforcible only because that clause is just one more negotiated part of the agreement, not because there's a law or city ordinance that says this must happen.

Another hitch is that one of the initial clauses in any contract is that the municipality recognizes a specific union by name as the representative authorized to negotiate for a specific group of officers.

This is going to get sticky if the city labor negotiators decide to use the switch of unions as a way to muddy up the legal waters in order to get concessions in the next contract. You're going to need labor lawyers.. good ones. Don't be surprised if the city decides this is a good opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper.

It might be a better move if the membership were to replace the current union leadership via vote rather than start over with an entirely fresh union.

[DeltaV]

We went through this last year and our contract stood, however that was because the city agreed to adopt the same contract and not because they had a legal requirement to do so.

Since the laws can differ from state to state, you need to get the new union and old union to pony up and have their lawyers provide you some case law proving their point. If one of the sides refuses to do so or says that they cannot, that's because the law isn't going to be on their side. A decent union should have lawyers who have access to case law like that, so it shouldn't be hard to find out for sure.