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Public Employee Press
Local 1457 prez wins suspension battle
with DJJ
The Dept. of Juvenile Justice agreed to restore all but
one day of its 60-day suspension of Local 1457 President Alex Parker following
an escape by a resident at a detention facility.
The union agreed to the one-day penalty after three days of hearings made
clear that DJJs attempt to blame the escape on Parker the
tour commander at the time of incident at Horizon Juvenile Center in the
Bronx on July 19, 2004 rested on questionable grounds.
The hearings showed that Horizon lacked procedures to deal with security
breaches. The staff was hamstrung by a broken-down video monitoring system.
The youth caught a few months later when he was allegedly involved
in another crime had slipped through a hatch that had no alarm
and jumped off the roof, which didnt have barbed wire.
To improve relations
When we were offered the settlement for a one-day suspension, it
seemed like the best thing to do in terms of improving labor relations,
Parker said. Attorney Leonard A. Shrier handled the arbitration.
It didnt make sense for the local to pay to continue the case
when we were only talking about one days pay, Parker said.
Anyone who reads between the lines of the settlement can see that
Ive been vindicated.
Of course they tried to blame this on the front-line staff, when
it is managements responsibility to have a system in place,
Parker said. While DJJ fired or suspended about five other workers, it
hasnt held any managers accountable.
During the arbitration process, the union charged that the agency was
particularly harsh with Parker because of his aggressive leadership. Local
1457 has denounced understaffing, waged a public campaign about assaults
on the job and sued DJJ in federal court over its failure to properly
credit workers sick leave, leave time and overtime.
Parker said he prepared for the hardship of going without pay by putting
himself on a strict budget as DJJ investigated the escape, anticipating
that management would target him with a harsh penalty.
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