Public Employee Press

Local 420 wins benefit for Tech with eye injury

It took the union and an arbitrator’s order to get the Health and Hospitals Corp. to pay Patient Care Technician Miriam Rivera’s contractual benefits after she suffered an on-the-job injury that threatened her eyesight.

Rivera, a Local 420 member, was taking the patient by ambulance from the Sea View Rehabilitation Center on Staten Island to the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan on April 11, 2008, when the driver sideswiped a parked vehicle. The accident smashed a window on the passenger side where Rivera was sitting and the flying glass injured her right eye. She returned to work and filed an accident report before she left the hospital.

Rivera quickly contacted her Hospital Division Council Rep Felicita Rodriguez Creque, who filed her claim for Line-Of-Duty Injury benefits under the union contract. Rivera also applied for Workers’ Compensation, and the compensation board ruled that she had an occupational injury to her eye.

When hospital management denied the request for LODI benefits, Creque filed a grievance. In Step II and III hearings on June 30 and Oct. 28, 2008, management again rejected her request, arguing that there was no disabling injury to support the claim for LODI benefits.

The union took the case to arbitration, and at the hearing on July 20, 2009, Rivera’s union attorney explained that HHC had clearly violated the contract by denying the benefit. HHC argued that the employer had the right to determine whether she was physically disabled as a result of an injury incurred in the line of duty.

Pointing out that an independent medical examiner concluded that Rivera suffered a retinal abrasion in the accident and that management never disputed Rivera’s Workers’ Compensation claim, the arbitrator ruled in favor of the union and ordered HHC to pay the LODI benefits.

“I could have lost the use of my eye,” said Rivera. “The union’s attorney and my council rep did a great job of protecting my rights.”