The Illinois Second District Appellate Court recently issued a decision finding that holiday pay was not pensionable under the language of a collective bargaining agreement because it was not “fixed” and thus was not “salary under the Pension Code.
In Village of Hanover Park v. Board of Trustees of the Village of Hanover Park Police Pension Fund, 2021 IL App (2d) 200380 (May 28, 2021), the Village of Hanover Park (the “Village” and Metropolitan Alliance of Police Chapter 102 (“MAP”), the union for the patrol officers of the Village, entered into a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
Several sections of the CBA set the terms for holiday pay. Section 6.1 of the CBA established a list of nine days that “[a]ll police patrol officers covered by [the CBA] shall have *** considered as holidays.” Section 6.2 of the CBA governed how holiday pay was awarded to the patrol officers.
Section 6.3 provided the eligibility requirements for police patrol officers to receive holiday pay, such as reporting to work on the officer’s last full scheduled working day preceding and the first full scheduled working day immediately following the day observed as a holiday unless the officer is using an authorized benefit day.
The Village filed for administrative review of the Pension Board’s determination that the holiday pay was pensionable. The Illinois Second District Court of Appeals found that the Pension Board’s determination that Holiday pay under the CBA was pensionable was clearly erroneous. Id. at ¶ 60.
In reaching this decision, the Court determined that the issue on appeal was whether or not holiday pay under article 6 of the CBA was “fixed” compensation. Id. at ¶ 59. Under section 3-125.1 of the Pension code, police officers are required to contribute to the pension fund a percentage of salary. The administrative code defines “salary” for pension purposes as “any fixed compensation received by an employee of a municipality.” 50 Ill. Adm. Code 4402.30 (eff. Apr. 9, 1996). The administrative code defines “fixed” as “payment in a predetermined amount which can be determined through an examination of the appropriation ordinance, plans or agreements establishing salary.” Id.
The Court determined that, because section 6.3 of the CBA established the eligibility requirements that a police patrol officer must meet to receive holiday pay for the holidays listed in section 6.1, holiday pay was not “fixed.” Simply, “holiday pay” was not “a predetermined amount which can be determined through an examination of the appropriation ordinance, plans or agreements establishing salary.” There were officers who did not meet the requirements set forth in section 6.3 and would not receive holiday pay. The instances where officers did not receive holiday pay because the officers did not meet the eligibility requirements of section 6.3 of the CBA was evidence that the holiday was not “fixed” compensation, and was not salary under the Pension Code. Id. at ¶ 65.
