Supreme Court backs finding that firing of Lancaster County workers was 'anti-union'

The state Supreme Court has reinstated a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board finding that Lancaster County officials improperly fired two employees because they supported a unionization drive.

The decision the high court handed down this week overturns a Commonwealth Court ruling that found county officials displayed no "anti-union animus" in the 2010 firings of Adam Medina and Tommy Epps.

County officials denied the firings were motivated by anti-union spite and claimed Medina and Epps were justifiably axed from their jobs as security workers at the county's youth intervention center because they took a bag of snacks from a co-worker's mailbox.

Justice Correale F. Stevens wrote in the Supreme Court opinion that the labor board reasonably concluded the snack-taking charge was merely a pretext for firing the men. Stevens noted the two were canned soon after they told their supervisors they backed a push by Council 89 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees to unionize the youth center workers. The two had urged other workers to support the union as well.

Also, the justice wrote that the county didn't follow its own disciplinary policy before firing Epps and Medina. That policy calls for graduated discipline, including verbal and written warnings and suspensions, before a worker is fired, Stevens noted.

Instead, he wrote, Epps and Medina were terminated immediately after a probe of the snack-taking incident, even though center officials hadn't even bothered to investigate claims involving thefts by other employees. No other center workers had ever been fired for taking items from other employees' mailboxes, the justice observed. And, he noted, the worker who owned the snacks later said she had no objection to Medina taking the food.

The labor board decision upheld by Stevens' court requires the county to reinstate Epps and Medina with back pay. The dispute isn't over, however, since the justices sent the dispute back to Commonwealth Court for further consideration of other issues that weren't appealed to the Supreme Court.

Source: PennLive