Collective Bargaining, Interest Arbitration, and the Delivery of Police Services

Abstract

Most municipal police officers in the U.S. are unionized, and a large number of police unions have access to compulsory interest arbitration to resolve negotiating disputes. This article contains a summary of the key findings of a two-year study of police collective bargaining and interest arbitration in cities over 25,000 population. Police bargaining is positively and significantly associated with wage rates and fringe benefits; arbitration's availability is positively and significantly associated with wage rates and police contract provisions, and the use of arbitration (i.e., receiving an arbitration award) has no consistently significant association with any of these outcome variables (controlling for arbitration's availability). Also, both bargaining and arbitration are associated with higher police department costs. However, these associational results may or may not indicate causality.

Interest groups, local politics, and police unions

“…Many media stories, government studies, and activist reports suggest that police unions have negotiated contracts that strongly shape the operations of police departments (US Department of Justice 2000, US Conference of Mayors 2020, Campaign Zero 2016 ). They have pointed to ways in which grievance and arbitration provisions in contracts can tie the hands of police chiefs (Delaney and Feuille 1985 ). In that respect, they can be seen as “interest groups on the inside” (Anzia and Moe 2019 ).…”

The Effect of Collective Bargaining Rights on Law Enforcement: Evidence from Florida

“…3 Indeed, most prior studies on the effects of collective bargaining by law enforcement officers examine the relationship between the bargaining environment and officer remuneration. Unionization is consistently and positively associated with officer wages and benefits (Briggs et al 2008;Delaney and Feuille 1985;Doerner and Doerner 2010;Feuille and Delaney 1986;Feuille, Hendricks, and Delaney 1983;Freeman and Valletta 1988;Trejo 1991;Wilson et al 2006;Zhao and Lovrich 1997). 4 There is also some evidence that police performance is affected by changes in wages relative to a reference point.…”