Olympia approves three-year contract with Police Sergeants union
The Olympia Police Sergeants Association, the union that represents 12 sergeants in the city’s police department, got a three-year contract extension last week.
The city council voted unanimously last Tuesday to approve the contract, which includes raises based on sergeants’ level of education. Those with an associate’s degree (the minimum qualification to be a sergeant) get a 2% pay bump, while those with a bachelor’s degree will see a 3% pay increase.
Detectives, hiring/training, and administrative sergeants within the police department will get a 0.7% raise, and all 12 sergeants will receive a cost of living increase of 1% per year and an increase in life insurance benefits.
The total increase in cost to the city is $75,088 for 2021, and $38,000 for the following two years.
According to City Manager Jay Burney, the three-year contract period will allow city staff time to negotiate several other labor contracts, including a new contract for the Olympia Police Guild, a different union that represents 60 officers in the department.
The Olympia Police Guild’s contract was extended in January, but only until the end of 2021.
Negotiations on a new contract for the Police Guild are expected to take place in the fall, and two council members — Dani Madrone and Renata Rollins — have signaled their intention to push for more substantive changes to the Police Guild contract at that time, after hearing feedback from residents through the new Social Justice and Equity Commission and the Ad-hoc Committee on Public Safety.
In January, Madrone hinted that reforming certain clauses of the Police Guild contract when it’s re-negotiated this fall might be essential for achieving the goals that the two reform commissions are tasked with, but didn’t specifically say what those clauses might be.
“It’s possible that there are things in this contract that if we don’t address them, it will make it impossible to do some of the things that we want to do,” Madrone said.
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 1:22 PM.
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