Management Rights - AELE's Home Page

Assignment 5-3
A police chief's authority to assign his officers to
particular duties is a matter that concerns the
public safety. 7
The court went on to say: ". . . the Legislature did not intend to empower
the arbitration panel in making its award to deprive the chief of his
authority to 'exercise his own discretion and judgment as to the number,
qualifications and identity of officers needed for particular situations at
any given time.'" (The court referred to its prior decisions in the case of
Labor Relations Commission v. Natick, 369 Mass. at 442, 339 N.E.2d 900
(1976) and was quoting from Chief of Police of Dracut v. Dracut, 357 Mass.
at 502, 258 N.E.2d at 537 (1970).
The court included the following example to explain its reasoning: "For
example, suppose a reserve officer had special experience in a problem
which a particular detail was likely to face over a limited period of time
and the chief deemed that the experience made him/her uniquely
qualified to serve on that detail for that period of time. Article IX, §3,
would prevent the chief from assigning the reserve officer to the detail in
preference over a regular officer. See Boston v. Boston Police Superior
Officers Federation, 9 Mass. App. Ct. 898, 402 N.E.2d 1098 (1980)."
In its 1970 decision, the SJC discussed the rights of a police chief and
found that the right to assign was an inherent managerial prerogative
which could not be contravened by the provisions of a collective
bargaining agreement. 8 The union proposed requiring the chief to give
exclusive consideration to the individual request, personal preference,
seniority and rank of a police officer in determining the assignment of
duties, shifts, vacations and leaves of absence. The court found such
proposals not to be mandatory subjects of bargaining and stated:
To deprive the chief of his authority to assign his
officers to their respective duties and to
substitute therefor the disputed provisions of the
agreement would be totally subversive of the
discipline and efficiency which is indispensable
to a public law enforcement agency. 9
Several court cases addressing the ability to assign officers have involved
the Boston Police Department. In its 1979 decision, the Appeals Court
ruled that the Boston Police Commissioner's assignment of an officer to a
desk job and the refusal to issue a service revolver to the police officer,
which resulted in the deprivation of overtime assignments and paid
details, was not a proper dispute for arbitration since a matter of inherent
managerial prerogative was involved. 10 In addition, it ruled that the
Commissioner has the power to order a psychiatric examination as a
Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee