Contract Negotiations Continue Between Wilmette and Police Union

Wilmette, IL - Negotiations will continue between Wilmette and the union that represents its police department’s patrol officers, said Assistant Village Manager Michael Braiman, as reported by The Chicago Tribune.

Until a contract is agreed upon, the union’s 33 members, represented by Teamsters Local 700, will work under the terms of a 3-year contract that expired Dec. 31, the Tribune reported.

Talks between the village and the union began in mid-October of last year, Braiman told the Tribune, shortly before Wilmette’s village board approved a 3-year contract with its firefighters.

That contract was retroactive to January 2014 and was approved only after negotiations went to mediation and then to federal arbitration, Braiman told the Tribune, adding that talks with the police union have yet to require outside involvement.

“Right now we’re not working with anyone, no mediator,” he said. “We’re continuing to meet. Sometimes these processes take a little longer to complete, but we’re working on it.”

Officers covered by the contract represent the majority of Wilmette’s 48-person department, according to the Tribune. Braiman said the Teamsters Local 700 have represented patrol officers since 1993, according to the Tribune.

Unlike the firefighters represented by Wilmette’s Firefighters Service Employee International Union Local 73 — who successfully kept a two-tier salary system out of their latest contract as a result of a federal arbitrator’s September 2015 ruling — the police union operates under the two-tier salary system that covers Wilmette’s non-union employees, according to the Tribune.

In 2010, the village imposed a lower salary tier for all non-union employees hired after Jan. 1, 2011, the Tribune reported. In negotiations for their last contract, Local 700 accepted the two-tier system for officers hired after Jan. 1, 2013, the Tribune reported.

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