Redondo Beach Police Refuse Contract Offer

Redondo Beach police, who have been working without a contract since June 30, rejected the city’s latest offer this week, disappointing city officials and union negotiators who believed that they had an acceptable agreement.

In its second membership vote on a contract offer in two months, the 85-member Redondo Beach Police Officers Assn. on Monday rejected the proposed agreement, said association President Paul Wrightsman.

The sticking point was the city’s offer of a 6% annual pay hike over a two-year contract. Officers want a 7% annual increase but would accept 6% if it was in a one-year contract, Wrightsman said. Union officials put the offer to the membership without a recommendation, he said, and thought the members “might consider voting yes. . . . They studied it and said ‘no way.’ ”

City Manager Tim Casey said the city’s negotiators assumed that the two sides had reached an accord after recent meetings and that both would recommend the contract.

“We thought we had resolved all the issues but apparently there’s some little chink that proved unacceptable,” said Casey, adding that city officials were prepared to recommend it to the City Council.

Casey has declined to comment on most details of the negotiations but said the city is insisting on a two-year contract, the same length as the contracts signed by employee groups that negotiate for maintenance and clerical workers.

“We don’t like to go through this process every single year,” Casey said.

Wrightsman said the police want a 7% increase and a one-year rather than a two-year contract.

“They made absolutely no move on their wage offer,” Wrightsman said. “Most of the members don’t like that at all, and we knew that would be a sticking point. That is the underlying reason why we rejected it.”

According to Wrightsman, the city made several concessions in the latest round of talks, including retaining a survivor’s benefit for families of officers killed while on duty, and taking a “reasonable stance” on emergency family sick leave, which offers officers special leave during family emergencies such as illness, births or deaths.

In contract negotiations settled earlier this year with the two other city employee groups, both agreed to two-year contracts with annual increases of 6%, Casey said.

But the police association, citing two shooting incidents involving Redondo Beach officers this year, has argued that officers should not be grouped with other city employees when the city sets pay increases because their job is more dangerous.

Redondo Beach police also have argued that they are among the lowest paid in the South Bay. According to the association, the average Redondo Beach police officer’s salary is about $3,100 a month. Police salaries are an average of 6% higher in Manhattan Beach, 7% higher in Gardena, 12% higher in Torrance and 22% higher in Hawthorne, association figures show.

In September, the association voted unanimously to reject the city’s offer of a 6% wage increase. Dozens of officers and their families set up tents on the front lawn of City Hall to protest the stalled negotiations.

The two sides were planning another negotiating session before Tuesday’s council meeting, Casey said.