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.