|
Public
Employee Press Arbitration
Award: $50,000 Three DEP supervisors recoup
OT pay An impartial arbitrator recently ordered the Dept. of
Environmental Protection to pay three union Supervisors an estimated total of
$50,000 in overtime, retroactive to October 2006. The arbiter determined that
the agency had been violating DC 37s Citywide Contract by rescheduling their
shifts to avoid paying overtime.
We are very satisfied with the outcome.
It sends a clear message that we have a contract that should be adhered to,
said DEP Supervisory Employees Local 1322 President Fred Ricci. As PEP went to
press, the union and management were reviewing payroll records to calculate the
exact amounts owed to Julio Nunes, Nathan Schwartz, and Joseph Gentile.
DEP
had been changing the shifts for 10 years or more, said Gentile. After
carefully reading the contract, Ricci and the three veteran Supervisors approached
management. This could have been resolved when I first took the grievance
and a copy of the contract to management, said Ricci, but they said
the contractual language didnt matter.
The three first filed
individual grievances and in 2007, Blue Collar Division Council Rep Robert Gervasi
filed a group grievance for the local.
DEP held that it was their longstanding
practice to change Supervisors schedules with two weeks notice to
provide coverage for jury duty, vacations and potential emergencies without paying
overtime for work beyond their scheduled shifts. The agency paid overtime only
when the workers got less than two weeks notice of schedule changes.
In
the arbitration hearing, DC 37 attorney Jesse Gribben argued that no matter how
much notice DEP gave, its policy did not supersede the contract, which prohibits
scheduling to avoid paying overtime.
The grievants were able to help the
union prevail, because they kept careful records of when DEP arbitrarily changed
their shifts.
In October, the arbitrator agreed and ordered DEP to end
the policy and pay Supervisors overtime when it reschedules their shifts.
Three
months later, Ricci said, DEP was dragging its heels and continuing erroneous
scheduling practices for Supervisors who oversee round-the-clock repairs on hydrants,
burst water mains, and sewer lines. Local 1322 has six similar overtime grievances
pending against DEP.
This decision should be useful in other situations
where employees find management rescheduling tours of duty or days off to avoid
paying overtime, said Gribben.
Now that DEP is reorganizing,
we hope they will be more responsive to our locals issues, Ricci said.
| |