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Public Employee Press
TA workers get back blackout leave day
The Transit Authority must restore a day of leave to over
1,000 current DC 37 members who were absent Aug. 15, 2003, due to the
blackout.
Arbitrator Jeffrey Selchick ruled April 11 that the TA violated the contract
by forcing employees who could not get to work to use leave time if they
wanted to be paid for the day.
Union members Rosa Cook, Joan Petrovits and Howard Ader testified about
the extreme hardships the blackout caused that made it impossible for
them to report to work Aug. 15, 2003, the second day of the power outage
that hit the Northeast late the previous afternoon.
The arbiter based his decision mainly on DC 37s snow days
arbitration victory after the blizzard of January 1996, which established
that under such circumstances, management must exercise its rights in
accord with a rule of reasonableness.
The cases were handled by union attorney Alan M. Brown, who also argued
that the TAs policy penalized employees for observing directives
from the mayor and governor to stay home.
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