By Gregory N. Heires

Responding to union pressure, the Dept. of Environment Protection has agreed to clean up a backlog of 300 grievances by Local 375 members.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts and Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 President Claude Fort headed a union group that discussed the issue with top DEP officials in July.

"These grievances could put a lot of money in our members' pockets," said Ms. Roberts. "We were pleased to come away from the meeting with a commitment that the agency will address the problem."
So far, the dialog has resulted in 50 promotions -with members getting raises of between $5,000 and $10,000—and the union expects more to come.

"With an average of 300 grievances at any given time at DEP, we have a situation that stands to get worse if it is not remedied right away," Mr. Fort said.

"Management has kept people working at lower pay than they should be receiving," Mr. Fort said. "We hope the meeting will put an end to a revolving door of grievances. The agency has also agreed to look into reclassifying employees to the correct title and salary for their work."

Local 375 Grievance Rep Karl Toth said the underlying cause of the grievance problem was long-term understaffing. Instead of hiring, DEP has routinely assigned staff to out-of-title work and nickel-and-dimed its work force, according to Mr. Toth.

Local 375 represents more than 1,100 engineering and technical employees at DEP, including over 150 in the upstate watershed area. Hundreds of members work on the massive Third Avenue water tunnel, one of the biggest public works projects in the world.

"A major problem has been DEP's failure to resolve grievances at the agency level," said DC 37 Professional Division Director Stephanie Velez. "Grievances were not resolved until we took them to arbitration."

Ms. Velez said that many times, after members win grievances, they are assigned again to out-of-title work, forcing them to file another grievance. The union is pressing DEP to continue to pay members at the appropriate, higher salary when out-of-title assignments continue.

Many grievants are waiting to be appointed to higher titles from civil service lists. The union is
pressing the agency to move the lists.

Besides Ms. Roberts, Mr. Fort, Mr. Toth, and Ms. Velez, the union's team at the July meeting included DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray, Local 375 2nd Vice President David Grant, DC 37 Rep Maynard Anderson, and the presidents of Local 375's three chapters at the agency, Steve Awad (Water Resources), Pat Alfarano (Air Resources) and Vincent Moorehead (Board of Water Supply). DEP Commissioner Christopher O. Ward and Labor Relations Director Terry Joseph represented management.