The Arbitration of Grievances of Police Officers and Fire Fighters

This is a study of 259 arbitrated grievances of police and fire fighters. The results indicate that salary cases were not as frequent as was expected, but work assignment cases were more frequent than expected. Unions which were not predominantly public sector unions represented police and fire fighters in a different way on issues of performance appraisal than did unions which were predominantly public sector unions. The existence of multiple grievants or issues of off-the-job behavior had impacts on other case characteristics or case outcomes.