Stockton police union agrees to new contract with city hiking pay, benefits

The Stockton Police Officers' Association and the city have come to a contract agreement to pay Stockton’s rank-and-file officers for the next three years.

The agreement follows months of negotiations. Stockton City Council approved the contract at their Sept. 27 meeting after rank-and-file police union members had been out of contract since June 30.

Stockton City Manager Harry Black said the deal is, from what the city can surmise, the most generous ever given to SPOA. The union has been supporting Stockton’s sworn officers since 1914.

“Our financial management team has worked this into the long-range financial plan, and it works,” Black said.

Inking deals with unions and special interest groups has been a sensitive subject for Stockton since the city’s bankruptcy involving a deal giving firefighters full healthcare in retirement and the 2008 Financial Crisis. In a time of economic uncertainty Black said he’s looking at the local economy, which is growing in the right direction, but he also is keeping an eye on the big picture.

“The state of the world is very dynamic right now, and you don’t know what you don’t know,” Black said. “The markets are down, which generates other impacts, such as impacts on CalPERS — we’re watching that very closely. When CalPERS is down, its members have to make up the difference.”

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The three-year contract includes a 9.8% increase to base pay — made up of a 2% cost of living adjustment (COLA) and a 7.8% market adjustment — retroactively effective July 1, 2022, and a 4% base pay increase comprised of a 2% COLA and 2% market adjustment in 2023 and 2024. The three-year total base pay increases pen out to $38,812,111 for the 460 employees in the SPOA.

SPOA also received increases to the city’s health care contributions that come out to an $866,537 three-year cost to the city. One-time $5,000 bonuses come to $2,256,960.

SPOA stayed at the negotiating table longer than the other three public safety unions working with the city — Stockton Police Management Association (SPMA), Stockton Firefighters’ Local 456 Fire Unit and Stockton Firefighters Local 456 Management Unit — to cut a better deal than was offered to address the ongoing retention and recruitment issues within the police department.

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Though SPMA and the fire management union do not have retention and recruitment issues and Black said fire rank-and-file's recruitment and retention has greatly improved over the past six to 10 months, the three unions were given 2% market adjustment bumps — a $1.6 million cost to the city — to match SPOA’s new deal. The unions had no “me too” clauses, but Black said it was the fair thing to do.

“They came to the table and signed off on their agreements in good faith,” Black said. “All around, we just thought it was the right thing to do. It is consistent with good faith bargaining.”

SPOA Vice President Jeremiah Skaggs said SPOA leadership was not expecting the matches for the other unions as he’d been under the impression the city was already stretched to the limit in what they could offer, but nonetheless he’s glad they were able to come to an agreement.

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“It’s going to slow the amount of officers we’re losing, but it’s not going to bring anyone back that left unfortunately, which was our goal,” Skaggs said. “I look at it like this. The police department is a tank of water, and there’s a five-inch hole in it. This contract was a three-inch plug for a five-inch hole. Water is still going to flow out.”

At 381 sworn officers as of Sept. 29, Stockton is over 100 officers short from being fully staffed at 485. Many are transferring to neighboring agencies for better pay and working conditions. Black said the new contract reduces the pay gap to 5-7% and hopes to close the gap in the 2025 bargaining cycle, or mid-to-low single digits in a worst-case scenario.

“Tracy Police Department still offers an incentive for officers who can recruit lateral officers, and the No. 1 place they’re doing that is from Stockton,” Skaggs said. “(They) still have a recruiting poster with one of our former officers on it in a Tracy PD uniform. It says, ‘Make the change now.’”

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Despite the officer exodus — SPOA leadership also has confidence in the department’s new leader. Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden has been an advocate for the rank-and-file union on contractual issues and working conditions, Skaggs said.

“We’ve seen better morale in the short period of time that he’s been here than we did in the previous few years,” Skaggs said. “He really listens to the officers … he takes those meetings to heart and implements change based on what’s needed at the line level rather than just listening to administrators who haven’t been on the streets in years.”

Skaggs said he hopes to see the short-staffed department replenish their ranks.

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“The main thing is to be able to serve the citizens to the quality that they expect and deserve. We need to be fully staffed and equipped,” Skaggs said. “Chief McFadden is equipping us, now we just need to work on our staffing.”

Record reporter Ben Irwin covers Stockton and San Joaquin County government. He can be reached at birwin@recordnet.com or on Twitter @B1rwin. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow. 

This article originally appeared on The Record: Stockton police union inks new labor contract deal with city