Public Employee Press

Board says agencies can’t skip bargaining

The DC 37 Legal Dept. protected members’ rights in three recent improper labor practice cases decided by the Board of Collective Bargaining, a unit of the impartial Office of Collective Bargaining. In two of the cases, BCB ruled that even where management had the right to set certain policies, the procedures to implement these policies had to be negotiated with the union.

To comply with post-Sept. 11 security regulations, in June 2004, the Dept. of Transportation unilaterally implemented a new policy stating that its storage facilities, including employees’ lockers, were subject to search at any time without notice.

When the union’s demand that the city bargain over its inspection procedure went unanswered, DC 37 filed charges on behalf of hundreds of Highway Repairers in Local 376, Assistant HRs in Local 983 and Traffic Device Maintainers in Local 1455.

The union said the policy was unreasonably intrusive and had to be negotiated, since criminal and/or disciplinary charges could cost a member’s job if a search uncovered questionable personal property.

BCB accepted the city’s argument that security needs outweighed members’ privacy concerns and decided that DOT was within its rights to create the policy. But the board ruled that how management implements the policy affects members’ conditions of employment and therefore must be bargained. Negotiations would give the union a say in issues such as notification methods, documentation of searches and the safeguarding of members’ property.

DOT ordered to negotiate
DC 37 lawyers won another improper practice case after DOT mailed an eight-page Residency Affidavit to its employees in February 2004. The union found the new policy highly intrusive in its request for background information on employees, their spouses and children.

DOT terminated three employees who submitted the affidavits for failing to maintain city residences and disciplined a dozen more for not submitting notarized affidavits on time. In a victory for DC 37 members, BCB ruled that while the agency has the right to enforce the Residency Law, it had no right to unilaterally adopt new procedures affecting the terms of employment.

The board ordered DOT to stop requiring the affidavits and to remove from its files and refrain from using all documents submitted by employees under the non-negotiated changes to its residency verification process.

In a third case, BCB upheld the union’s improper practice charge and ordered the Dept. of Finance to reinstate its compressed time program for certain employees. Holding that the number of hours worked in a day or week is a mandatory subject of negotiations, the board rejected DOF’s unilateral decision to eliminate its longstanding alternative work schedule. The program allowed 200 to 300 DC 37 employees to work an extra 45 minutes each day in order to take off one day every two weeks.

BCB ordered the agency to reinstate the program as it existed in October 2004 when management shut it down. While the decision affects only a limited number of Finance employees who recently lost the alternative schedule, and does not cover others in DOF or other agencies, it constitutes a warning to management that such unilateral actions are improper and can and will be contested by the union. DC 37 Legal Dept. attorneys Kim Hsueh, Melissa Brown and Fausto Zapata handled the cases.

— Diane S. Williams