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Public Employee Press
Local 1157 rains on DOTs snow job
An impartial arbitrator froze the Dept. of Transportations
attempt to give Local 1157 Supervisors a snow job about overtime pay for
emergency snow removal.
The decision put a days pay in the pockets of 15 Supervisors.
It was unfair that the agency changed Supervisors shifts to
avoid paying overtime, said Local President Mickey McFarland, who
filed the grievance with Blue Collar Rep Bill Fenty and DC 37 attorney
Alan Brown.
The union maintained that the Citywide Contract allows Local 1157 members
who sign up for 12-hour shifts of emergency snow removal after their normal
8-hour shift to get time-and-a-half pay for the additional hours worked.
DOTs federal excuse
But in January and March of 2004, DOT management used a federal law mandating
rest for heavy-duty truck drivers to justify changing the longstanding
policy to all but eliminate overtime pay for snow removal.
Past practice went out the window when the agency suddenly got this
brainstorm to change the shifts, cheat members out of overtime pay and
blame it on federal safety laws, McFarland said.
Brown argued that safety was not the issue and the federal act did not
apply because although the Local 1157 Supervisors are required to have
a commercial drivers license, as Supervisors they dont actually
drive heavy-duty trucks.
Contract violation
To change tours of duty to avoid overtime pay is unethical and violates
the Citywide Contract and the Section 220 prevailing rate consent determination,
said Fenty.
The arbiter agreed with the union that DOT violated the collective bargaining
agreement when it suspended the contract provisions to recalculate how
Local 1157 Supervisors accrue overtime pay. DOT was ordered to pay the
members according to past practice. As PEP went to press, Local 1157 and
DOT were negotiating the terms of compensation.
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