It's a sign of the times: The California Association of Highway Patrolmen, which undeniably has the best (and only active) contract in the state workforce, is in bargaining talks.
As Bee colleague Andrew McIntosh noted last week while filling in for us, the union's annual wage adjustment announcement is overdue. It's contract ties member pay to a survey of five other large California law enforcement agencies. The new pay rates take effect every July 1.
Usually the Department of Personnel Administration and CAHP announce the percentage increase earlier than that. Not this year.
CAHP Executive Director Jon Hamm tells us that the union is "working on the survey" with DPA and is "engaged in discussions about what to do about the pay raise."
Translation: The union and the Schwarzenegger administration have yet to agree on interpreting the wage results culled from San Francisco City Police, City of San Diego Police, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, City of Los Angeles Police, and City of Oakland Police. Once that bit of math is done, the question becomes what to do with the money due CAHP members.
While we've received phone calls and e-mails speculating that CAHP is getting anywhere from a 4 percent to a whopping 10 percent raise, we don't see it. As we wrote a few weeks ago in this news story, public employee unions including firefighters and police, are making pay and benefits concessions as governments everywhere are struggling with their budgets.
In that story, Hamm told us that, "Our members are very sensitive to what their colleagues are going through in terms of cuts and furloughs. There's a sense in our association that somehow we need to do our part. It's trying to figure out what - that's the difficult decision."
That didn't sound like a union executive ready to take a big pay raise victory lap.
We'll see how this shakes out. Stay tuned.
To read more about CHP officer pay is determined according to Government Code Section 19827, click here.
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