Probation question
I’ve been working at a smaller agency in Wisconsin for around 8-9 months now I had a weird hiring time where I wasn’t sent to the Academy right when I was hired, I was put through four months of field training and then sent to academy. We have a contract agreement between union and city that required out of county training that we are sent to we get paid travel time for. About three months ago during the academy, I was told by our executive assistant that I am able to submit my travel time but they want me to wait until the end of the academy to submit it all at once. A few days ago I submitted my driving time which was about 90 hours over 18 weeks. Today I got a call from From our Captain, who is acting chief as our chief is on vacation and retiring next month. That the city will not be paying that out because even though our department was out of county, I was staying in the county that the training was in. He also said that in the past, they’ve never paid out for travel time for people in the Academy, even though that’s not true. I’ve talked to several officers who have gotten paid mileage or travel time from the Academy. How would I go about this situation and if it does come to a grievance through the union, would that put me at risk from the department as I am on probation?
I’ve been extremely blessed to even have this job in the first place so I don’t want to say it’s not fair if they don’t pay me. But it doesn’t seem fair as they’ve paid other officers in the past for mileage. Also the
4 months I spent at the department I was driving 1 1/2 to work every day. I lived only 30 min from the academy so I decided to wait to move until I graduated.