Wicomico Co. Sheriff’s Office contract tied up in arbitration after grievance is filed against county

WICOMICO COUNTY, Md. – The Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office Collective Bargaining Unit (CBU) and Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 111 (FOP) are tied up in arbitration with the County. This comes after the FOP filed a grievance against the County.

Grievance Filed

“Last year the FOP, along with the Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office Collective Bargaining Unit, negotiated a new contract that took effect last July 1st of 2021,” said FOP president Scott Hamilton. “There were some discussions that occurred outside of the negotiations process that the FOP and the CBU were willing to entertain. However, those were never formally negotiated.”

Hamilton says negotiations had been going smoothly, as each party reached agreements on things like future benefits and salaries, working conditions, and workman’s compensation awards. However, that changed when the CBU and FOP received the final, published copy of the contract, according to Hamilton.

“We discovered that there was some language that was in the contract that wasn’t quite consistent with what we had agreed to during the negotiations process,” said Hamilton. “One deputy was directly affected by this new language. We were unable to reach an agreement outside of minimal process to kind of handle that informally, even though we had made several requests to try to handle it.”

Impacts

Hamilton says he can’t go into specific detail about the language the FOP takes issue with, or how that one deputy will be impacted, as it is an ongoing case. But, the discrepancies that he says were in the final contract were enough to move forward with filing a grievance.

“The process is in place to ensure that everyone has the best working conditions that we can provide, and that the employer, as well as the employees, are able to team up and establish a relationship,” said Hamilton. “When neither party can come to an agreement or settle the case informally, we rely on the outside arbitrator, who is completely impartial, to hear that evidence and make a ruling.”

As the grievance process plays out, Hamilton says he’s concerned about who will end up paying for the arbitration. “The arbitration process comes with fees, and those fees are not cheap. The contract does stipulate that the losing party shall pay the fees for all of these cases to be heard,” he said. “If the FOP is successful and the Collective Bargaining Unit is successful in this case, then the taxpayers are going to have to pay this bill. It’s something that’s upsetting as a taxpayer, myself.”

County Executive Responds

However, in a statement, Wicomico County Executive John Psota says “many of the assertions… are factually inaccurate.” Psota says the issues raised by the FOP were discussed in several bargaining sessions and emails between the FOP and the County in the first six months of 2021. He goes on to say that the FOP’s attorney also addressed the issues in an email on June 9th, 2021. That language was reviewed by the County in an email on June 11th, 2021, and was included in the final agreement, according to Psota. Psota says the final agreement was approved by himself and County Council, and was signed by Hamilton and Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis.