On Aug. 21, the Sheriff Officers Associations (ShOA) Board of Governors rejected an offer they have been fighting to obtain for more than two years. The sheriff's union, which has been without a contract since late 2004, has been fighting to resolve the impasse in contract negotiations and was seeking binding arbitration to do so.

As a result, Nassau County offered the union one-time binding arbitration for a period of eight years - dating back to 2004, which would have carried them through 2012 - but board members denied the offer because, they said, it was contingent upon them withdrawing its "lag payroll" federal lawsuit and submitting it instead to the authority of the arbitration panel.

ShOA officials state they also denied the offer because the county required the withdrawal of the union's pending charges with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), charges that asserted the county bargained in bad faith and inappropriately used the PBA re-opener clause, as a "me-too" clause.

"After carefully reviewing the offer, the Sheriff Officers Association's leadership officially voted to reject the county's one-time conditional binding arbitration offer," said ShOA President John Duer. "Instead we propose that the county hereby include, as part of any agreement or memorandum of understanding, a provision to be incorporated into all of the union's future collective bargaining agreements."

He continued, "This would permit binding interest arbitration to be utilized as detailed in the Taylor Law, once a PERB certified impasse has been declared. Thus this useful tool to resolve an impasse will not only be available now, but for all future contracts."

According to Nassau County Presiding Officer Judith Jacobs, "We want them to have a contract. We wish both sides - the union and the administration - could sit down in good faith in fact finding and come up with an acceptable contract. Binding arbitration, especially at this time in the county, financially, is not the way to go." She added, "It's not healthy for morale in the jail for this not to end."

Jacobs said the union's decision to deny the county's one-time binding arbitration offer means ShOA officials must return to the fact-finding stage, which was put on hold when the binding arbitration offer was put on the table. As a result, union members will continue to be without a contract.