On November 4, 2024, the City of Pleasantville, New Jersey, passed Resolution 177, updating its vehicle use policy to prohibit personal use and commuting with police vehicles except for essential Department heads. Eight days later, on November 12, Police Chief Stacy Schlachter issued a memorandum informing all police captains that they could no longer take police vehicles home pursuant to the new resolution. Prior to the resolution, on-call detectives and supervisors, along with captains in the command staff, had been permitted to take home police vehicles. Following the change, these employees were still required to respond to major crimes occurring within the City but received no stipend or overtime compensation for those duties.
On December 5, 2024, the Policemen’s Benevolent Association Mainland Local 77 filed an unfair practice charge against the City, alleging that the unilateral revocation of the take-home vehicle policy violated Section 5.4a(5) of the New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act. The PBA argued that the City was required to negotiate compensation for affected employees before implementing the change. The PBA and the City had been parties to a series of collective negotiations agreements, the most recent covering 2019 through 2023, which was extended by Memorandum of Understanding through December 31, 2026.
Following the issuance of a complaint by PERC’s Director of Unfair Practices on May 14, 2025, the PBA moved for summary judgment. The City opposed the motion and subsequently filed a cross-motion for summary judgment.
The Hearing Examiner found that the parties agreed that the City had unilaterally revoked the take-home vehicle policy. Critically, it was undisputed that the PBA never made a demand to negotiate the impacts of the change prior to filing the unfair practice charge.
The Hearing Examiner applied established precedent holding that the use of municipal vehicles for commuting purposes is not mandatorily negotiable and that a public employer has a managerial prerogative to control deployment of its vehicle fleet. However, the Appellate Division has recognized that while an employer may unilaterally modify such a policy, it must negotiate over “offsetting compensation for those employees who have lost the economic benefit of using a County vehicle to commute.”
The Hearing Examiner distinguished between unilateral changes involving mandatorily negotiable topics and “mixed cases” involving managerial policy changes that result in severable alterations in working conditions. In the latter, the duty to negotiate arises only where the majority representative makes a demand. The employer need not delay its managerial changes until negotiations on severable issues are complete.
The PBA argued that negotiations regarding compensation needed to occur prior to implementation of Resolution 177. However, the Hearing Examiner found that State of New Jersey and Fraternal Order of Police Lodge Investigators Association, P.E.R.C. No. 2012-24, 38 NJPER 205 (¶70 2011) controlled. In that case, the union had requested impact negotiations one week after the employer issued a directive affecting the vehicle policy, and the parties subsequently met to negotiate. Here, by contrast, the PBA never made any demand to negotiate impact prior to filing its charge.
The PBA argued that State of New Jersey was distinguishable because it was not afforded “any sit down meetings or negotiations” with the City after the policy change and because the City refused to meet or respond to offers made during the PERC investigation stage. The Hearing Examiner rejected this argument, noting that in State of New Jersey, the duty to negotiate arose only after the union made a specific demand. Here, no such demand ever occurred.
Finding no genuine issue of material fact requiring a plenary hearing, the Hearing Examiner denied the PBA’s motion for summary judgment and granted the City’s cross-motion for summary judgment, recommending dismissal of the complaint in its entirety.
City of Pleasantville, 52 NJPER ¶ 56 (PERC Hearing Examiner Jan. 5, 2026).