COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, INTEREST ARBITRATION, AND THE DELIVERY OF POLICE SERVICES

Most municipal police officers in the U.S. are unionized, and a large number of police unions have access to compulsory interest arbitration to resolve negotiating disputes. This article contains a summary of the key findings of a two-year study of police collective bargaining and interest ar-bitration in cities over 25,000 population. Police bargaining is positively and significantly associated with wage rates and fringe benefits; arbitration’s availability is positively and significantly associated with wage rates and police contract provisions, and the use of arbitration (i.e., receiving an ar-bitration award) has no consistently significant association with any of these outcome variables (controlling for arbitration’s availability). Also, both bargaining and arbitration are associated with higher police department costs. However, these associational results may or may not indicate causality