The Seattle City Council in Washington in January 2024 announced its intent to vote on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) this year. The SPOG’s current CBA expired in 2020.
Police CBAs that have reached an expiration date are still viewed as being in effect until a new agreement has been negotiated. CBAs establish a set of legal standards for the parties involved, which often cannot be deviated from without an agreed-upon change in contract. When a CBA expires, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), “almost all the terms of the expired contract continue while the parties bargain.”
The expired Seattle CBA has frustrated reform efforts that Judge James Robart deemed necessary to end a 2012 consent decree between the federal government and the Seattle Police Department. Robart, who is overseeing the consent decree, ended most federal oversight of the police department in September 2023 with the exception of certain officer accountability and crowd control policies, including tactics and use of force. Robart argued in 2023 that federal oversight is unlikely to end until a new CBA addresses certain accountability reforms, according to The Seattle Times.
