Public Employee Press

Impartial board faults city for ignoring layoff rules

The impartial Board of Collective Bargaining ruled that the Finance Dept. violated the city bargaining law in November 2010 when it announced 129 impending layoffs to employees and the media but not to District Council 37.

The mayor's intended job cuts appeared in a New York Post article the same day managers told Dept. of Finance employees they would be laid off. The union quickly filed improper practice charges against the agency's plan to eliminate Office Machine Aides, Supervising OMAs and Associate Investigators in Local 1113 and Cartographers and Associate Engineers in Local 375.

With detailed and deliberate intent, DOF managers told several employees that as groups of employees were fired all but one job in their office group would be eliminated, said DC 37 General Counsel Mary O'Connell. "Their pattern was really horrible in this case," she said.

"This wrongful action subverted the organizational and representational rights of the union and its leadership," argued Senior Assistant General Counsel Steven Sykes, who handled the case, "and undermined DC 37's authority."

DC 37 successfully argued that the city and the DOF must follow the law requiring it to notify the union in writing 30 days before any impending layoffs.

Although DC 37 leaders met with DOF management in December on the proposed job cuts and addressed options such as redeploying affected members, the damage was done when DOF weakened employees' morale by ignoring the union, Sykes argued.

In January, the BCB ordered DOF "to cease and desist from breaching its duty to bargain in good faith," and to post notice of the violation. A labor-management meeting with DC 37 in December led DOF to eventually postpone and in some instances rescind the layoffs.

"DC 37 is happy with the decision," O'Connell said, as the union continued to fight layoffs and protect members' jobs.