The union won an important victory Mar. 19 when the impartial Board of Collective Bargaining unanimously ordered DEP to stop interfering in union business. The agency’s labor relations director had repeatedly tried to discourage Local 376 members from using the outspoken Tom Kattou as their representative.

“The agency tried to pick who it wanted to deal with,” said Local President Gene DeMartino. “But it’s the decision of the local to defend and represent members with the best people possible.”

Construction Laborers, Highway Repairers and Watershed Maintainers Local 376 and DC 37 filed improper practice charges earlier this year.

The board’s decision said the DEP official “not only repeatedly juxtaposed disapproval of Mr. Kattou with praise for other representatives, but also attempted to avoid dealing with Mr. Kattou by appealing directly to union members in order to influence the selection of their representative.”

“After she tried and failed to block me from attending a disciplinary hearing, she put her feelings in a memo,” explained Mr. Kattou, the local’s secretary treasurer. The director went as far as to write that Local 376’s membership “would be wise to discourage and inhibit such imprudent conduct” by the union officer.

“What she did was way out of bounds,” said DC 37 attorney Mary O’Connell. The DEP official clearly had violated the state’s Taylor Law on labor-management relations.

“Management cannot pick and choose who it wants to deal with. This case is not about personalities, but about management’s legal obligation to deal with elected union representation,” she said.

DC 37 Rep Chandler Henderson’s testimony before the board was helpful in establishing the labor relations director’s pattern of refusing to accept the union’s designated representative as an equal in the hearing process.

“This is a moral victory,” said Mr. Kattou, who was not cowed by the agency’s pressure. “Management can’t have its preference at every turn. The Taylor Law works for us too.”