Public Employee Press

Local 375 grievance wins $1/2 million

The Dept. of Design and Construction agreed to fork out half a million dollars in back pay and raise the salaries of 35 Local 375 members, acknowledging that they were grossly under-compensated for their work.

The local filed group grievances in May 2005 for the Civil Engineers (Level 1) and Construction Project Managers (Level 3) known in DDC as Engineers-in-Charge. The union said the EICs are routinely assigned duties more complex than their job specifications as they oversee multi-million-dollar construction projects.

Earlier this year, after arbitration hearings with the Civil Engineers, DDC and Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 agreed to settle the cases.

“The issue was clear, but the process was complicated,” said DDC Chapter Vice President Chris Onyechi, reflecting on the paperwork and analyses required to make the case for improved compensation and promotions. “It was a sweet victory, very sweet,” said Edgar Rubiano, the lead grievant in the CPM group.

Promotions and back pay
Under the settlements, DDC agreed to promote the 21 Civil Engineers who filed grievances to level 2 and to boost their salaries by 8 percent.

The 14 CPMs who filed grievances held out for an additional 2 percent. While they acknowledge that CEs are entitled to higher pay as licensed engineers, they pressed to narrow the pay gap between the two groups, which basically do the same work.

The CPMs got the extra 2 percent after Local 375 President Claude Fort met with Commissioner David Burney and Deputy Commissioner Jeff Bonne in the spring. The minimum salaries for incumbents are $75,106 for CE Level 2s and $71,062 for CPM Level 3s.

The additional raises come to several thousand dollars and the back pay awards, dating from the initiation of the grievances three years ago, total over $17,000 for each worker. Many are using the money to pay debts and meet household expenses. Rubiano said his will go toward City College tuition for his 19-year-old daughter, Alicia, who is studying to become a dentist.

Local 375 1st Vice President Jon Forster, who worked on the grievances from the beginning, said the agency did the right thing in the end by settling rather than continuing in arbitration. He praised the members for sticking together and credited former DC 37 staff attorney Melissa Brown and Assistant General Counsel Steven Sykes for their painstaking effort to put together the documentation needed to argue the cases. “Because the members stuck together as a group, the agency could not pick them off one by one,” Sykes said.

“These folks deserve every penny they get,” Fort said. “They are all very competent and talented. And they save the taxpayers’ money because doing this work in-house is more efficient and less expensive.”