Public Employee Press

Slapped down: ACS vendetta against Caseworker

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Management has a right to mismanage, many say. But some managers at the Administration for Children’s Services let themselves get out-of-control.

They went too far when they kept a union member out of work for most of seven years — with pay — as a vindictive disciplinary case based on false charges dragged on and on.

On Dec. 4, the Board of Collective Bargaining ordered ACS to back off from its vendetta of retaliation and harassment against Caseworker Ralph Vanacore, a member of SSEU Local 371.

The impartial board found that the agency had interfered with Vanacore’s right to grieve workplace injustices and violated its duty to bargain in good faith with the union. BCB ordered ACS to stop “retaliating and discriminating” against him.

“Basically, they didn’t like me because of my union activity,” said Vanacore, who is a shop steward. “I was strong about sticking up for people. I was relentless.”

Vanacore’s troubles began in 1998 when he got into a heated dispute with management after he was turned down for a position in the new Child Welfare Specialist and Child Protective Specialist title series.

Ever since then, Vanacore found himself targeted for disciplinary actions — suspensions and firings — that the union countered by filing grievances and going to arbitration.

The union showed BCB that after each grievance victory by Vanacore and the union, management retaliated with disciplinary actions — some involving stale charges and manufactured evidence — and that the agency had even failed to implement a negotiated settlement and refused to obey an arbitrator’s order to reinstate him.

Astonishingly, ACS on one occasion actually “fired” Vanacore while he was temporarily off the payroll.

“Suspicious” behavior by management
The “repeated, suspicious” pattern of events convinced the board that ACS “acted with anti-union animus” against Vanacore, was “overly punitive” in terminating him, and “subverted the grievance process” as it applied to Vanacore, who is now back at work.

“The board’s ruling rejects the city’s use of the disciplinary process to terrorize workers,” said Faye Moore, the local’s vice president for grievances and legal services. “Ralph’s case is the most glaring example of their mistreatment of workers and misuse of the disciplinary process.”

She said the union is “sick of managers targeting workers they don’t like for disciplinary action. This is a victory for all of them. As with Ralph’s case, the union will always stand up for members who face this abuse.”