It's comes with the job for Winnipeg police officers — overtime.

If re-elected, Mayor Brian Bowman says it's time to get rid of a benefit tied to those extra hours.

"No other civic pension agreement includes overtime in pensionable earnings calculations," said Bowman.

Bowman says he wants to remove overtime from police pension earnings. He says this would save $1.5 million per year, suggesting that money could be used to add 10 to 15 new officers to the streets.

"This is a way to use existing money in the police budget to remove pensionable earnings and move it into frontline services," said Bowman.

Bowman says city council can make this change without the police union's blessing and outside of the collective bargaining process.

The Winnipeg Police Association disagrees, saying it would take the city to court if this was done unilaterally.

"Either he's trying to mislead the public or he's grossly misinformed," said the union’s president Moe Sabourin.

Sabourin says Bowman is making this pledge to fire back at the union over a campaign ad it made, critical of the mayor.

"What he is trying to do is tarnish the WPA by coming forward with this type of initiative," said Sabourin.

Bowman has accused the police union of campaigning for his main rival, Jenny Motkaluk. Both have denied the mayor's claims.

Motkaluk also slammed Bowman's overtime pledge

"The result of it is going to be a more adversarial relationship between the City and Winnipeg police, the very people that we charge with providing safety every day," said Motkaluk.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says Bowman's promise doesn't go far enough. It wants to see the the entire police pension overhauled to be more in favour of taxpayers. The lobby group also agrees the overtime pension benefit has got to go.

"People shouldn't be maxing out their overtime just to run up their pensions. This is something taxpayers can't afford and most taxpayers can't do things like this,” said Todd MacKay, spokesperson for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

This is not the first time the overtime pension issue has been raised at city hall. Councillor Scott Gillingham brought it up in 2016.