GARY – The city of Gary owes millions of dollars in back pay to its police officers and firefighters who’ve worked without new contracts for more than two years, union leaders say.

City Sanitary District workers and Housing Authority members also are working under expired contracts, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said.

“It’s a tall order for our legal department. But one that I am very confident we will work through.” the new mayor told The Times of Munster for a story Sunday.

The lack of contracts highlights the financial straits that the gritty industrial city and its workers have endured amid a state cap on property taxes and reduced tax collections.

The Gary Fraternal Order of Police believes police officers whose last contract expired in December 2009 are owed millions of dollars in back pay because of raises they were promised but have never received, FOP President Samuel Abegg said.

The amount officers are owed from January 2008 through July 2010 exceeds $2.2 million, Abegg said. That doesn’t include money that retirees may be owed because of the stalled raises. Back pay since mid-2010 hasn’t been calculated yet, he said.

FOP officials have been pushing the new administration to come to agreements with them because the money the police are owed in back pay grows by the day, Abegg said.

“We know the city is cash-strapped,” he said. “And we are trying to do the right thing by bargaining in good faith.”

Firefighters have been without a contract for about two years and are trying to recover money they believe they are owed from being forced to take furlough days, Gary Firefighters Union Local 359 President Raynard Robinson said.

The firefighters sued the city in January 2010 to collect pay that was lost when the city made them take furlough days, Robinson said. The city cannot alter firefighters’ pay because the contract they were working under set their salaries, and the furloughs reduced those salaries, he said.

“We just want our pay back, and we want to negotiate a new contract,” he said.

Lawyers from both sides met Feb. 2 and have another status conference hearing in June.

“They’ve contacted our lawyers, and they want to talk,” he said.

Freeman-Wilson said her administration hopes to resolve the back pay issues and contracts with the police and firefighters soon.

The absence of other contracts with city workers also is under review by the legal team, the mayor said.

“I think it is incumbent upon us to really impress upon the employees that we value their dedication to the city and that dedication is evident in the fact that they come to work every day and they don’t have a contract,” she said.