By Jennifer Gomori, POJ Editor
L’Anse Village Police Local Union President Fabian Kristo has never had an in-person meeting with his former POAM Labor Representative and it was becoming increasingly difficult to get a timely response about his officers’ concerns. So, the Upper Peninsula group decided to check out the competition and liked what they heard.
L'Anse Village Police joined the Police Officers Labor Council (POLC) in February 2025 by a unanimous vote and by March, they had their first POLC-negotiated agreement.
“Our contract was up on March 15th and we were able to get everything settled before the 15th,” Kristo said. “We were very pleased.”
L’Anse Village Police had been with the POAM for about 25 years, but in recent years their Labor Rep. was ill and unable to meet their representation needs.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for just short of 11 years. I’ve been with L’Anse Police for 4 years. I don’t ever remember meeting our representative,” Kristo said. “I talked to him on the phone and emailed but it was getting to the point where we’d asked questions, but he wouldn’t answer us. But he had some health issues delaying the response. He was never present during negotiations. I believe he was handling everything by phone.”
Kristo previously served with the now POLC-represented Baraga County Sheriff’s Office as a Deputy for 6-1/2 years when they were with the POAM. “When they switched over (to POLC), we heard what the Sheriff’s Office was getting and how they were being represented,” Kristo said. “I met with (POLC Labor Rep.) Mike Griffin. He worked for Baraga County Sheriff’s. We decided to talk with Mike and he showed us what he would do and what we could do working with him.”
Everything changed when they joined the POLC. The group obtained a more beneficial contract in an extremely timely manner with 9 percent raises over 3 years.
“This was my first year as Union President and President during negotiations. We’re mostly pleased with the raise. We were able to negotiate the raise pretty effortlessly,” he said, adding it’s a larger increase than what they obtained with their prior Union.
The group more than tripled their Shift Differential in the new contract, effective March 15, 2025, from $.30 cents to $1 for officers working 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. They also added two new paid Holidays — their birthdays and President’s Day — bringing their yearly paid Holidays to 12.
“Those are the only three things that changed and they didn’t give up anything,” Griffin said. “They have a pretty good Defined Benefit retirement and their medical is good.”
The Employer will continue to pay all medical insurance premiums and Employees’ co-pays remain at $20 for office visits and $50 for emergency room visits.
“The insurance is very good. We have Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Kristo said. “We have really low co-pays and their insurance has been great. I’ve recently gone through some health issues myself and I’m very impressed what they covered. We kept our Defined Benefit and we can get a 457 through MERS as well.”
The four-member group also had their contract language cleaned up a bit. “He just cleared up some confusing verbiage in the contract. My experience so far has been very good,” Kristo said. “I feel like we will definitely be more represented. We are very happy with how negotiations went. We sat down with Griffin and he made negotiations very easy to go through. He made us understand things we didn’t understand and brought a lot of information we never had before.”
“I’d say we were most pleased with the communication — that’s our big thing. The communication is key,” he said. “There was great communication between us and the Rep. and, if we had questions, he’d answer us almost instantly. If he didn’t know the answer, he was able to get it for us in a day’s time.”
