The Treasurer’s Ledger

POAM’s Recruitment Director Gary Pushee has informed me that in October 2008, Wayne County Deputies will finally have the opportunity to vote on affiliating with our organization. According to Gary, the current Local 502 Executive Board has been asking employees to sign interest cards for an independent association called the Wayne County Deputy Sheriffs Association, which will also be appearing on the ballot. The irony is that SEIU has allowed Local 502 to act as its own independent association for decades.

Over one hundred collective bargaining groups have switched to POAM in the last four years. Price was not an issue – even though in most of the cases our monthly dues were less. Wayne County Deputies will be saving around $15 per month and receiving “full service” from the entire POAM support staff. That is an outstanding value.

It’s a bargain because of the resources available to the group and the experience of the people administering it. The POAM Business Agent assigned to Wayne County will have negotiated hundreds of contracts and represented employees in countless grievance hearings and arbitrations. POAM attorneys have argued cases in front of the Michigan Supreme Court, Federal Court, Michigan Court of Appeals and numerous Circuit and District Courts. Some POAM lawyers are former prosecuting attorneys and have prevailed in some of the highest profile criminal and labor cases in the state.

Should Wayne County Deputies choose independence, where will they find the experience necessary to guide their negotiating team? Will the inexperience of local employee representatives be improved by independence?

When POAM restructured and committed to full service twenty-five years ago, we represented a few dozen groups. Our competitors said we weren’t big enough or had the experience to represent counties like Kent, Macomb, Genesee, Washtenaw etc…  Since then we have grown ten times over and the same people responsible for that growth and garnered the experience are ready, willing and able to take on Wayne County.

The size of a collective bargaining unit does not determine the difficulty in providing the appropriate representation. POAM has all the necessary resources and support staff to provide that high quality of service in Wayne County. The most difficult employers frequently exist in some of Michigan’s smallest counties.

A big part of the problem with independent groups like Wayne and Oakland County is that because they are not part of an established union. They become engaged in protracted litigious exercises that produce poor results at the expense of the local association. Oakland County’s six-year 312 debacle is a prime example of how independence fails its membership. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wayne County Deputies finally have a real opportunity to change that.