Public Employee Press

Arbitration Award: $50,000
Three DEP supervisors recoup OT pay

An impartial arbitrator recently ordered the Dept. of Environmental Protection to pay three union Supervisors an estimated total of $50,000 in overtime, retroactive to October 2006. The arbiter determined that the agency had been violating DC 37’s Citywide Contract by rescheduling their shifts to avoid paying overtime.

“We are very satisfied with the outcome. It sends a clear message that we have a contract that should be adhered to,” said DEP Supervisory Employees Local 1322 President Fred Ricci. As PEP went to press, the union and management were reviewing payroll records to calculate the exact amounts owed to Julio Nunes, Nathan Schwartz, and Joseph Gentile.

DEP had been changing the shifts “for 10 years or more,” said Gentile. After carefully reading the contract, Ricci and the three veteran Supervisors approached management. “This could have been resolved when I first took the grievance and a copy of the contract to management,” said Ricci, “but they said the contractual language didn’t matter.”

The three first filed individual grievances and in 2007, Blue Collar Division Council Rep Robert Gervasi filed a group grievance for the local.

DEP held that it was their longstanding practice to change Supervisors’ schedules with two weeks’ notice to provide coverage for jury duty, vacations and potential emergencies without paying overtime for work beyond their scheduled shifts. The agency paid overtime only when the workers got less than two weeks’ notice of schedule changes.

In the arbitration hearing, DC 37 attorney Jesse Gribben argued that no matter how much notice DEP gave, its policy did not supersede the contract, which prohibits scheduling to avoid paying overtime.

The grievants were able to help the union prevail, because they kept careful records of when DEP arbitrarily changed their shifts.

In October, the arbitrator agreed and ordered DEP to end the policy and pay Supervisors overtime when it reschedules their shifts.

Three months later, Ricci said, DEP was dragging its heels and continuing erroneous scheduling practices for Supervisors who oversee round-the-clock repairs on hydrants, burst water mains, and sewer lines. Local 1322 has six similar overtime grievances pending against DEP.

“This decision should be useful in other situations where employees find management rescheduling tours of duty or days off to avoid paying overtime,” said Gribben.

“Now that DEP is reorganizing, we hope they will be more responsive to our local’s issues,” Ricci said.