Public Employee Press

Stopping agency attacks on union activists
Impartial board slaps down DEP for retaliating against shop steward

The impartial Board of Collective Bargaining ruled in July that the Dept. of Environmental Protection violated the city bargaining law by retaliating against Construction Laborer Kevin Harris for becoming a Local 376 shop steward and filing a safety complaint at DEP's Bronx Repair Yard.

When the district supervisor learned Harris was running to represent and defend his co-workers, he threatened the activist, saying, "If you give me any problems, I'll make it hard for you."

Unintimidated, Harris was elected unopposed. Soon he filed a safety report for a broken latch that took a DEP truck out of operation.

In response, his supervisor assigned him to work eight consecutive days in a nine-day period, including Memorial Day. Harris tried to switch days with a co-worker to have the holiday off, but the supervisor blocked the move, while letting four other Construction Laborers change their schedules.

Harris went to Local 376 and the union filed improper practice charges.

In a two-day trial, the board found that at no other time had the DEP assigned such a "crushing" work schedule, except through voluntary switches, and ruled that DEP was guilty of violating the labor relations law.

Happy that the board had slapped DEP down, Local 376 Vice President Thomas Kattou said, "Unfortunately, this kind of managerial behavior is an old story at DEP." The local has won a series of retaliation cases against the agency."

Local leaders believe DEP has been "beating down its Construction Laborers with so-called cost-cutting measures and excessive disciplinary actions" since the agency began taking advice from the Veolia consulting firm, Kattou said, "but this decision shows that we will prevail in the fight against retaliation."

DEP's behavior "is demoralizing to our members, who are proud civil servants but it doesn't balance budgets," he said. "Management is destroying DEP from within."