Thanks to a $1.5 million arbitration settlement, 40 Local 375 members at the Dept. of Environmental Protection received promotions and back pay awards of nearly $40,000 each.

“This victory took a long time, but the persistence of our members paid off,” said Local 375 President Claude Fort. “With the new title and better pay, the agency is finally giving these workers the respect that they deserve.”

The case dates from 1994, when a group of Environmental Control Technicians at DEP filed a group out-of-title grievance. They charged that they were assigned to perform tasks that were much more complex than the responsibilities listed in their job descriptions.

The workers install, maintain and repair electronic instruments at sewage treatment plants, ensuring that water has been properly cleaned before it is discharged into the city’s rivers.

The grievance resulted in an arbitration award estimated at over $4 million in 2000. The city challenged the award in court and the union fought back. Rather than waiting years for a decision, which could have gone against them, members voted to accept smaller back pay awards — totaling $1.5 million — after the city agreed to create a new, better-
paying title series.

“This is a classic story of a group of workers whose job responsibilities grew more complex as they adapted to new technology,” said DC 37 Assistant General Counsel Leonard D. Polletta, who handled the arbitration. Assistant Director David Paskin of the Research and Negotiations Dept. and Local 375 Grievance Rep Karl Toth worked on the case, which was initiated by Mike Gimbel, the local’s DEP Chapter 8 Executive Board chair.

“We were upgrading our skills and not getting properly compensated,” said Dalton Niles, who served on a committee of members elected to represent DEP workers affected by the case.

Years ago, ECTs did their work with rudimentary measuring devices, such as test tubes and knotted ropes, to measure effluent and water levels. But now they rely on sophisticated electronic equipment and computers to guarantee the cleanliness of the discharged water.

“We had to become computer literate,” said Chris Pianelli, one of the committee leaders. “Before, the job involved basic mechanical work. Now we use laptops on the job and do a lot of data analysis.”

DEP agreed to implement the new title series in March, with retroactive pay from January 2002. The new title is Instrumentation Specialist; base pay ranges from $37,045 to $51,000, about $6,000 to $9,000 (depending on level) above what the workers received in the ECT titles.

In March, DEP distributed the $1.5 million to cover out-of-title work back to 1997. Most of the workers received back pay awards of $39,800.