Milwaukee, Police Union Battle Over Contract

Milwaukee City Hall. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.

Negotiations over a new union contract for Milwaukee’s rank-and-file police officers have sure gotten ugly.

The Milwaukee Police Association (MPA), led by president Alexander Ayala, has taken to openly mocking Mayor Cavalier Johnson and protesting at Milwaukee City Hall.

The mayor indirectly fired back Tuesday morning after delivering his annual budget address.

The escalation comes as both sides are meeting with an arbitrator this week to establish a new contract. The last MPA contract expired in 2022.

While initially agreeing not to negotiate in public, both sides have now publicly disclosed their high-level positions. The city is offering a 9% raise while MPA is seeking nearly 13%.

But the MPA, in a social media post Tuesday afternoon, made it clear it’s seeking more than a 13% raise going forward.

“The mayor continues to frame this as 9% vs 13%, but that misses the real issue. The city’s proposed 9% increase does not include back pay, which means officers would have worked the past three years without any raise at all. In reality, that locks in three years of lost wages, something no other city employees have been asked to accept,” said the union. Depending on the structure of the back pay request, and based on the size of the union, the city could have to quickly pay out millions of dollars to MPA members.

A new Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association contract, approved earlier this year, included back pay. A fiscal note attached to its approval indicated back pay on that agreement, which also replaced one that expired in 2022, cost $5.25 million. It also adds $8.5 million in costs next year to what was previously an approximately $150 million Milwaukee Fire Department budget.

A new Milwaukee Police Supervisors’ Organization contract, adopted in July 2024, does not include retroactive pay.

The MPA, backed by a press release from Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), has also begun criticizing the mayor for awarding raises to elected officials and other city employees after Act 12, the sales tax law, was passed in 2023.

“I’m going to be blunt. The Legislature helped Milwaukee because it said it couldn’t afford to hire more police and was going bankrupt – quickly,” said Wanggaard in his press release. “And what do they do? They balloon their budget and give large salary increases for everyone but police. They leave rank-and-file police officers without a contract for three years and hurt recruitment and retention efforts at the Milwaukee Police Department. It’s a bait and switch.”

Johnson, in addressing the media Tuesday morning, initially sidestepped the charged nature of the debate. “First of all, I think it’s important to say that I believe that police officers deserve a raise too,” he said. “However, if the union were to get what they talked about, that would put a significant gap in our budget to the tune of millions of dollars, right? So, we are working with arbitrators right now. That process is happening, and I’m looking forward to the results.”

But when pushed about Wanggaard’s comments in particular, the mayor stepped into the fray.

Johnson said the senator, a retired police officer whose district includes the southwest corner of Milwaukee, doesn’t understand the bill he voted for. “I don’t think that the senator actually read the bill because there’s a number specified,” he said. “We’ve got to get to 1,725 police officers. What that means is we have to grow the number of police officers. The bill was not to increase the pay necessarily of police officers who are presently on the force.”

The proposed 2026 budget includes funding for three police recruiting classes with 65 recruits each, the maximum capacity of the MPD academy.

Johnson said it was important to look at the history when comparing things like elected official pay. Milwaukee’s elected officials last received a raise in 2008 before getting an approximately 15% bump in 2024. “The Milwaukee Police Association, those officers have had a roughly 30% increase in pay,” said the mayor. He accused the senator of cherry-picking data and being disengenuous. “And the last increase police officers got was from my administration, by the way.”

At least one council member had harsher comments for the senator.

“What a dick,” said Ald. Peter Burgelis on Tuesday morning about Wanggaard’s comments. He criticized the senator for not focusing on solutions, a charge Burgelis also made in a press release last night. Back in July, Burgelis, after a closed session meeting where council members were briefed on the negotiations, called on the city and MPA to reach a voluntary agreement.

The arbitration process started this week, but could take several weeks to be completed. The arbitrator may choose either side’s offer or create a melded version of the two.