PA Convention Center Labor Dispute: Official to hear case - against himself

It will be interesting, for want of a kinder word, to be Jack E. Marino on Monday.

In a hearing room in Harrisburg, Marino, a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board hearing examiner, will have to sit and listen as he is accused of raising the "appearance of impropriety" and of, perhaps, "bowing to political and other pressures."

Then at the end, either that day or later, Marino will have to decide whether his accusers are right - and whether he should kick himself off a case, leaving it to someone else to figure out whether union carpenters or Teamsters were improperly ousted from the Convention Center 18 months ago.

And all because Marino changed his mind.

A quick review: In May 2014, leaders of the carpenters and the Teamsters union local working in the Convention Center did not sign a new customer-satisfaction agreement by a management-imposed deadline.

The leaders signed a few days later, but by then, their members' work had been divided among other unions at the center.

In July 2014, the two unions filed unfair-labor-practice complaints with the state Labor Relations Board, and Marino was assigned the case.

In February 2015, in a two-paragraph letter, Marino alerted lawyers for the unions and the Convention Center Authority that he was canceling future hearings and would soon issue a decision dismissing the complaints, saying the PLRB did not have jurisdiction in the case.

Why? Because the PLRB hears cases involving public employers. Yes, the Convention Center Authority is a public employer, but the union carpenters and Teamsters are actually employed by a private-sector labor broker. The authority, Marino wrote, "is not a joint employer" with the labor broker.

Marino's Feb. 2 letter was greeted with jubilation by Convention Center executives and the city's tourism marketing apparatus, since it seemed to signal an end to a public, and not always pretty, dispute with the ousted unions.

Then, on April 16, it all blew up.

On that day, Marino inked a 14-page order saying that he had "reconsidered that decision," and that the "jurisdictional question becomes the central question" in the case, hinging on whether the authority and the labor brokers were joint employers.

He wrote that he would soon schedule hearings.

Though the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters and the Teamsters were happy with Marino's reconsideration, the Convention Center Authority and the unions that had gained work there reacted with alarm.

"The reversal has raised concerns that he bowed to political or other pressures," the Convention Center's lawyers wrote in a brief, saying PLRB's credibility was at stake.

Leaders from the stagehands' and laborers' unions asked Gov. Wolf to investigate whether any "undue political pressure was applied" to Marino to cause him to change his mind.

Lawyers from the Convention Center sought an emergency hearing from the full PLRB board, asking the board to vacate Marino's decision or assign the case to a different examiner "not employed by the board."

The PLRB declined, telling the lawyers to take it up with Marino. Marino agreed, saying it was his decision to make.

Source: Philly.com