Tentative agreement reached
The City of Minneapolis’ Labor Relations team and Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis (POFM) have been negotiating a new 3-year police contract for 9 months, since September 6, 2023. The tentative agreement was reached on May 28, 2024 and the POFM union voted to ratify the agreement on June 4.
Next steps
The contract will move to the Minneapolis City Council for approval. The Council is expected to consider the contract at its Thurs. June 27 meeting. If the Council does not approve the contract, it will move back to mediation.
If approved, the contract would deliver a historic boost in pay for Minneapolis peace police officers and significant reforms. The 21.7% pay increase over the three years of the contract would make the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) among the highest paying in Minnesota by 2025.
Key reforms
We outlined the key reforms with a brief description for each.
Zipper clause
It is common for parties to a collective bargaining agreement to address issues that arise in the middle of the term of an agreement through one-off letters of agreement (LOAs).
- The City and POFM have, over many decades, entered these LOAs and there has been confusion about which ones were still in effect.
- In this agreement, the parties have re-looked at those LOAs, decided which ones should still exist, and agreed that only the ones that are actually included as part of the main agreement will continue into the future.
- This means the City, the Federation, and the public can know the full scope of what has been agreed to in writing at the start of the term of the contract.
Staffing flexibilities
In the past, the collective bargaining agreement has controlled multiple aspects of how MPD assigns work, both in terms of shifts and locations, and mandated numbers of promotions.
- The new agreement will give management more discretion over job assignments and staffing ratios, so that the Chief and his leadership team can assign officers to areas of the greatest need, and make promotions based on candidate readiness, not based upon a mandated percentage.
- The City also negotiated a change to significantly reduce the period of time it takes to fill vacancies.
Civilian investigators
Minneapolis has undertaken the hard work of re-imagining its community safety system, ensuring personnel are being deployed where they’re needed most.
- With fewer sworn personnel serving in MPD, the City has continuously worked to identify opportunities to assign specialized civilian staff to clerical and investigative work and enable officers to be out on the street and present in community, and more available to address critical needs.
- Through the new agreement, the POFM has agreed that the City can make permanent hires of hire civilians for to assist with investigative work.
- By “civilianizing” work that can be completed by a non-sworn employee, the Chief will be able to keep the limited complement of MPD officers focused on critical safety work.
Public data requests
Officers will no longer receive automatic notification of the identity of the person requesting public personnel data about them.
Leave time period
When there are allegations of severe misconduct, the Chief will have complete discretion to place the officer on paid investigatory leave for up to 180 days. In the past, the Chief only had complete discretion for the first 30 days.
- This gives the Chief more flexibility to take keep an officer off the street while focusing on the investigation.