For Supervising Public Health Nurse Tonya Pearson, the bureaucratic nightmare began in September when the Dept. of Health said she had been hired at the wrong pay rate. They told Ms. Pearson her salary would be slashed by several thousand dollars and claimed that she owed the agency nearly $13,000.

“I was furious,” said Ms. Pearson, a member of United Federation of Nurses and Epidemiologists Local 436. “I wasn’t going to accept this without a fight.”

In October, the department imposed the salary cut and started subtracting $198 from her biweekly paycheck toward the $13,000. By filing a grievance after only one payment, DC 37 Rep Stephanie Miller managed to stop the recoupment deductions. But the department moved ahead with the salary cut, which cost Ms. Pearson about $400 a month.

The agency claimed that Ms. Pearson’s work at the Administration for Children’s Services shouldn’t count as nursing experience because her civil service title at the time was Associate Staff Analyst. But Ms. Pearson’s work as a health coordinator, her ACS in-house title, required nursing experience. “Personnel completely misread our member’s employment history,” said Local 436 President Gloria Acevedo.

“Can you imagine your employer telling you, ‘Oops, we hired you at the wrong rate. Now you owe us $13,000’. This was outrageous,” she said.
Ms. Miller worked closely with Ms. Pearson to document the case by tracking down former ACS supervisors, who detailed Ms. Pearson’s nursing experience.

Ms. Acevedo and Ms. Miller accompanied Ms. Pearson at a Step 3 grievance hearing on April 16. The union presented evidence that Ms. Pearson’s job at ACS met the contractual experience requirement.

Review Officer Amanda Cunningham ruled for the union May 2. Ms. Miller said the decision should make it easier to argue in future cases that the contract counts job tasks – not just titles – as experience.

Stephanie Velez, director of the DC 37 Professional Division, praised Ms. Pearson for her persistence and hard work in helping Ms. Miller document the case.