No limits on guard union hours

By Andy Furillo, Sacramento Bee, June 14, 2005

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association scored a victory Monday when an arbitrator ruled the state cannot limit the time the CCPOA can devote to union activity.

Officials from the state Department of Personnel Administration had sought to block further allocations of "release time," which is donated to the union by individual members - basically from their vacation and holiday time allotments - for union activities ranging from attending conventions to giving its president time off to do his job.

DPA officials said the current contract limits release time to 10,000 hours over its five-year life span and that the number has already been exceeded by more than 100,000 hours.

But in siding with the union, arbitrator Carol A. Vendrillo cited testimony from the CCPOA and the state's former negotiator that the parties agreed to get rid of the cap in an off-the-record agreement that was made two months after the contract went into effect in 2001. "Based on the weight of the evidence, it is concluded that the parties came to a mutual 'meeting of the minds' during negotiations regarding the terms of their (contract)," she wrote in her 25-page decision.

The union hailed the decision as a significant victory.

"It means we can continue to do business as usual, and we're going to continue to be a vocal critic of both the Department of Corrections and the California Youth Authority and to try to expose areas in which they are failing to maintain public safety," CCPOA Vice President Lance Corcoran said.

State officials had charged that the union had already consumed more than 120,000 hours of release time in the current contract. The CCPOA disputed the figure. Vendrillo, in her decision, said that Department of Corrections employees had used 86,450 release-time hours from March 2002 through March 2005. The contract runs from July 1, 2001, through July 2, 2006.

Youth and Adult Correctional Agency spokesman J.P. Tremblay said that state officials have not yet decided whether to appeal the arbitrator's decision.

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Last modified: June 14, 2005

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