The public sector is always a challenge as a Labor Relations Professional. With the constant transition in and out of elected and appointed officials at all levels and many with differing personal agendas, most with little or no professional labor relations experience, management and administration of the agreements and workforce by these inexperienced officials often creates additional liability for the municipal, county and state bodies. What the county administrator did by delivering this seemingly benign statement is a testament to that as nothing needed to or should have been said at all.
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Commonwealth Court on Tuesday upheld a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruling that Berks County officials committed an unfair labor practice in dealing with an employee scheduling issue at the county prison.
The LRB found that a county administrator delivered a threat by telling a union steward worker that the county might terminate a trial optional work schedule for all prison employees if a caseworker didn't agree to work on Mondays.
In a contract reached in 2008 with the Pennsylvania Social Services Union, prison workers received the option to work four 10-hour days instead of a five-day week. The pact allowed the county to terminate the new schedule and return to a five-day week on 30 days notice, however.
The dispute Commonwealth Court weighed in on involved the schedule of Karen Arms, a prison caseworker. In 2010, after a leave of absence, Arms returned to work at the prison and eventually asked to return to a four-day schedule, with Mondays off.
According to court filings, Arms' supervisor then told the union's chief shop steward that Arms would have to switch her day off to Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday or the county would give notice that it was ending the four-day week option for all unionized prison workers.
In reaction, Arms chose to return to a five-day schedule so other workers wouldn't lose the four-day option, filings in the case state.
The union filed an unfair labor practice charge which the labor relations board upheld. That board agreed with the union that an improper threat had been made and ordered the county not to coerce or threaten workers who try to exercise their rights under the union pact and to give Arms Mondays off.
In appealing to Commonwealth Court, county officials claimed no threat had been made and that the supervisor dealing with Arms' case was merely exercising constitutionally protected free speech and voicing a legitimate concern over staff scheduling needs.
Adequate staffing of caseworkers is especially important on Mondays, which are busy days for the intake processing of new inmates, the county claimed. It contended that the labor relations board ruling impaired its ability to manage prison staff.
Yet in Commonwealth Court's majority opinion on the case, Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer noted the prison had functioned for a year without Arms working on Mondays while she was on leave and her job went unfilled. So, Cohn found "substantial evidence" that the threat to eliminate the four-day work week was in response to Arms' request to exercise her contract right, rather than a staffing concern.
In fact, the judge noted, there is evidence that Arms wasn't processing inmates on Mondays, but was working as a counselor in the jail's community re-entry center, where Mondays were not so busy.
Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt filed a dissenting opinion, siding with the county. She found there was no threat, just a statement of the facts by county officials regarding a valid staffing problem that was delaying inmate processing. President Judge Dan Pellegrini and Judge P. Kevin Brobson agreed with her.
"The county did not threaten reprisals. The county did not even ask Arms to give up her (four-day week) schedule; it asked only that she select a day off other than Monday," Leavitt wrote. Also, she noted that the four-day week was a trial program that the county had a right to end.
"The county was placed in a Catch-22," Leavitt wrote. "Had the county not spoken with the union steward about the problem with the (four-day week) program, the county would have faced a charge of committing an unfair labor practice. When the county did speak, it was, in fact, charged with an unfair labor practice."
Joel Barras, an attorney representing the county in the dispute, declined comment on the court's ruling and the possibility of an appeal. He said he had not had a chance to review the decision or discuss it with county officials.
Source: Pennlive.com
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