Police union pushes for Hopewell citizens to demand immediate action on collective bargaining

HOPEWELL – The city appears to be amenable to collective bargaining for public-safety and municipal workers … just not right now.

And that is not sitting well with the law-enforcement association that has been pushing for it.

Tuesday night, City Council will take up a resolution that will delay passage of an ordinance to bring collective bargaining to Hopewell as soon as the city administration finishes working with the Robert Bobb Group. In the meantime, the city will continue to offer bonus incentives of up to $20,000 to police officers if they agree to stay with the police department for an additional three years.

Either way, the Virginia Police Benevolent Association is not happy with the process and is asking citizens to show up for Tuesday night’s council meeting and urge immediate action. VAPBA is accusing the city of dragging its feet on taking up the issue, noting that it presented a boiler-plate ordinance last April for Hopewell to use in crafting its own version.

“They are just going to steamroll forward and push for a vote that’s just going to kill it,” Constance Moreau, the secretary of the Hopewell chapter of VAPBA, told The Progress-Index last week.

Issue: Retention, pay and working conditions

The issue between VAPBA and the city focuses on recruitment and retention of city police officers. VAPBA says the average tenure of a rank-and-file police officer is less than three years. According to VAPBA, officers can go to neighboring jurisdictions and make more money under less stressful working conditions currently in Hopewell.

Hopewell has a police payroll of 68 officer positions. At least 15 of them are currently vacant.

Proponents say that allowing collective bargaining increases communication between city workers and city administration, and is a proactive strategy for addressing issues before they become official grievances. They said the city will always have the last word on how issues are resolved and that none of the city’s authority will be lost because of collective bargaining.

In addition to the retention and pay, VAPBA also has expressed concern about working conditions. With the department being short-staffed, officers say they are often called upon to work extra shifts with little time off in between. They also note that additional required training is cutting into on-the-street coverage because there are sometimes not enough officers out on the street to cover for those in training.

City Council held a public hearing on the issue at its Oct. 10 meeting but delayed taking a vote until city administration had a chance to weigh in on the proposal and make a report back to council. The timetable offered at that meeting was to have the police department agree on its bargaining unit and bargaining agent first, then to have the city appoint its labor-relations agent by next year.

The process would not fully exist until 2025 at the earliest and be part of the city’s annual budgeting by the next fiscal year.

Council held a closed-door work session on the issue two weeks after the Oct. 10 meeting but emerged with a plan to draft the resolution under consideration Tuesday night. VAPBA said it was annoyed that representatives were not invited to take part in that discussion.

What the proposed resolution says

A draft of the resolution – which was included in the meeting agenda packet the city posted online Thursday – directs City Manager Dr. Concetta Manker to study the fiscal impact collective bargaining would have on Hopewell and report back to council “within 120 days or sooner.” It also would hold off any council action until after the Bobb Group finishes implementing a project management operations plan to bring Hopewell financial house back into order.

The $988,000 agreement with RBG began in September and was projected to take about eight months to complete, which puts it as early as May 2024.

No date was mentioned in the resolution for when a final draft of the CB ordinance would come back to council.

In 2020, the Virginia General Assembly voted to allow public-safety and municipal workers to take part in collective bargaining. Since then, VAPBA says, at least a dozen Virginia localities, including Richmond, Virginia Beach and Alexandria, have adopted ordinances to permit collective bargaining.

Hopewell would be the first Virginia city under a 25,000 population to allow it, as well as the first Tri-City area locality. The city's 2023 census count was 23,490.

Under that legislation, police officers and city workers would not be allowed to go on strike should any CB negotiations stall or break down. Nor would the localities be allowed to lock out those employees who are part of those negotiations.

“VAPBA is not your traditional union, it is a non-profit made up of almost 10,000 members with numerous chapters governed by a state division board,” the group said in its call for citizens to show up at Tuesday’s meeting. “VAPBA does not benefit from collective bargaining, but its members do.”

The 'boogeyman'

In her interview with The Progress-Index last week, Moreau embellished that statement. She said the word “union” has been used “as a boogeyman by certain aspects of the political climate for a very long time” -- especially the image that unions exist only to strike when pay or working conditions warrant.

“The police officers cannot strike,” Moreau said. “And I think even if we could, we have a dedication to our job that we’re not going to let that happen.”

Moreau came to Hopewell two years ago from south Florida where she worked for the Davie Police Department for 15 years. Florida has allowed collective bargaining for years, and Moreau said it has done wonders for police recruitment and retention. It also especially helped morale because officers felt like they could bring issues up at any time and not allow them to fester.

“There are no strikes there, and you have everything from teeny tiny little cities with maybe 25 officers all the way to Broward [County] Sheriff’s office which is one of the largest law-enforcement agencies in the country,” Moreau said. “All of them have collective bargaining, and none of them are striking. So if that’s happening there, why would that be any different here?”

Hopewell officials declined to comment on VAPBA’s statement. However, in earlier comments, Manker took issue with social-media posts claiming that the city was not supporting its police force. She said those statements were “instilling hate, fear and confusion” over the matter.

The public portion of the City Council meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers at the Municipal Building on Main Street. It will be preceded by a closed session at 6 p.m. and a work session at 7 p.m.

In the interim, city administration has presented a retention-incentive program that would pay certified officers a $20,000 bonus and non-certified officers a $12,000 bonus if they sign an agreement to stay with Hopewell for three years. If the agreement is signed and the officer leaves for another locality in that three-year period, they would have to repay the bonus to the city.

Moreau said VAPBA is not happy with that agreement either, and few fellow police officers have signed it. She said instead of using the bonus money for living expenses, the threat of repayment would only force officers to put it away and not touch it out of fear of having to pay it back.

“It’s a carrot on a stick,” Moreau said of the agreement. “Why not just give us the carrot?”

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Hopewell will consider collectivve bargaining resolution for police