IBPO Wins Arbitration Awarding Retiring Member Vacation Pay
March 27, 2008
A captain who retired from the North Smithfield, Rhode Island Police Department will receive an extra 30 days’ vacation pay after the IBPO won his case in arbitration.
The grievant retired in June 2007 after 27 years of service to the North Smithfield department. The collective bargaining agreement said that he should be paid for vacation time he had accrued before retirement. The town paid him for 39 days, but the IBPO calculated his vacation cash-out at 69 days. They grieved the case all the way to arbitration.
Contract language the local had secured in the 1990s was intended to clarify a troublesome section on vacation accrual. The contract language, which remains in effect today with only minor changes, stipulates that employees would accrue their vacation time on January 1 of each year. Employees would accrue different numbers of vacation days based on their length of service; for example, an employee with 20 years or more service to the town would get 30 days vacation per year. Employees could carry over up to 28 vacation days from previous years and could convert to cash any accrued vacation days.
The disagreement at the heart of the arbitration was over the meaning of accrued—the IBPO said a member earns vacation on January 1 of that year, while the town said the member was advanced the vacation time for the forthcoming year. When the grievant retired, the town calculated his cash conversion for 39 days: 28 unused vacation days, plus 15 days he’d earned during the first half of 2007, minus four vacation days he used that year before his retirement. However, the town did not pay him the 30 days he accrued as of January 1, 2007.
At arbitration, IBPO Attorney Gary Gentile argued that the town owed the grievant for the full 69 days. The arbitrator quoted from Black’s Law Dictionary:
Accrue…In past tense, in sense of due and payable, vested. It means to increase; to augment; to come to by way of increase; to be added as an increase, profit or damage. Acquired; falling due; made or executed; matured; occurred; received; vested; was created; was incurred. Accrued compensation. Awarded compensation, due and payable, but not yet paid.
The arbitrator concluded that the contract language plainly intended that the employee would receive cash conversion of vacation days accrued on January 1, in addition to whatever other vacation days were convertible. Based on that language and other inconsistencies in the town’s argument, he rejected the town’s position that vacation days accrued meant vacation advanced, but not convertible. He ordered the town to pay the grievant the additional 30 days’ cash conversion vacation pay.