Public Employee Press

22 Chemists win $200,000 in back pay

Local 375 won $200,000 in back pay and promotions worth up to $10,000 each for 22 lab workers at Bellevue and Metropolitan hospitals.

After the local filed group grievances, the Health and Hospitals Corp. agreed to promote the workers, and in June they moved up from Assistant Chemist to Associate Chemist 1.

The grievances are part of a broad effort by the local to address out-of-title work in laboratories throughout the public hospital system, said Local 375 Executive Chair George Lawrence, who worked on theBellevue and Metropolitan cases with HHC Chapter 3 President Khursheed Siddiqi.

“Our members are doing work above and beyond what their job descriptions call for, and we want to make sure that they are fairly compensated,” said Claude Fort, president of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375.

Siddiqi said the union’s cases hinged on showing that the workers had performed the supervisory duties and more complex tasks required of Associate Chemists.

“They deal regularly with doctors and use sophisticated machinery in doing their lab work,” Siddiqi said. Their responsibilities include testing blood for HIV, hepatitis and other illnesses, as well as training new employees to work on the lab equipment.

Emperatriz Zapata, who works at Bellevue, said Local 375 members decided to pursue the grievance in part because HHC failed to compensate them for upgrading their skills.

Over the years, the hospital required the workers to assume more and more responsibilities as they were trained on new equipment, but would not upgrade their titles, she said.

Furthermore, the Assistant Chemists regularly train new workers, a supervisory task, said Zapata, who used some of her back pay for a summer vacation with her husband in Santo Domingo.

“We feel comfortable now,” said Nabila Yacoub, who also works at Bellevue. “If we work hard, we deserve this.”