City Council approves 3-year contracts for police, office employees

After a closed-door session at the end of the Jan. 18 regular meeting of the Belleville City Council, the council reconvened and approved two, three-year union contracts for city employees.
The two bargaining units are the Belleville Police Officers Association / Police Officers Association of Michigan (BPOA/POAM) and the GELC union for general employees.
City Manager/Police Chief Dave Robinson said all city employees will receive a 2.5% pay increase each year of the three-year contract.
Also, all city employees hired after July 1, 2021 will have a Health Care Saving Plan for retiree health benefits instead of the traditional health care plan. This gives the employee more options for retiree health care and also reduces the city’s long-term liabilities for health-care cost.
City Manager/Chief Robinson said there were many simple language changes that got rid of outdated items. For the GELC, job classifications were updated, getting rid of positions that no longer exist.
For police, now that they work 12-hour shifts, all language that included the word “days” was converted to “hours.”
City Manager/Chief Robinson said, “I believe these contracts were good for both the employees and the city and I found that both collective bargaining groups were great to work with and negotiations on both sides were reasonable.”