Public Employee Press

Clericals bust NYPD for violating federal law

Some 500 Local 1549 members will get $300 each in the settlement of a union lawsuit that charged the Police Dept. with illegally denying sick leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to Police Communications Technicians and Supervising PCTs.

DC 37 and Clerical Administrative Local 1549 settled the 2006 class action lawsuit in June.

The settlement affects anyone in the PCT and SPCT titles in the emergency 911 operation who applied for intermittent leave under the FMLA from June 2003 to the present. About 500 NYPD communications workers submitted signed and notarized general releases and affidavits of liens by the Sept. 25 deadline to receive the $300 payments; the named plaintiffs will get about $1,800 each in back pay as part of the settlement.

“This lawsuit was less about the money than about getting the court to order the Police Dept. to stop violating members’ rights under the FMLA,” said DC 37 attorney Steve Sykes. Sykes and Ivan Smith and Maureen Stampp, partners in the law firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith, handled the lawsuit.

Since the union filed the suit, the Police Dept. stopped illegally canceling FMLA sick leave, and demanding that workers show up or be written up as AWOL (absent without leave).

The department had violated members’ rights by refusing to let employees use FMLA leave when they had overtime assignments and by requiring them to recertify their FLMA forms every 30 days. The agency agreed to end these violations and stopped giving lower performance evaluations to employees who used FMLA.

“This case is an important victory that exposes the wrongs the Police Department tries to inflict on our members,” said Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez. “Working with the reps and attorneys Ivan Smith, Maureen Stampp and Steve Sykes, the chapter members stuck together and got justice. We are very pleased with the outcome.”