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Court rules in probation officers’ case

5 min read
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In a split decision, Commonwealth Court decided in favor of Washington County juvenile and adult probation department employees in a longstanding dispute over the length of the work day, concluding that the county committed an unfair labor practice.

The county recently lost its attempt to have the matter heard by the full Commonwealth Court, but it has until Oct. 11 to appeal the Commonwealth Court decision to the state Supreme Court.

The dispute goes back nearly a decade.

When the county and the probation officers were unable to reach a contract after the officers’ pact expired Dec. 31, 2003, the employees, who are members of the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 84 and are not permitted to strike, took the matter to a labor arbitration panel. Included in this contract was language that their shift was to last 7 1/2 hours.

The arbitrator issued a decision in 2004 that the probation officers should have an eight-hour work day. The late President Judge David L. Gilmore notified the county commissioners that he refused to implement the eight-hour shift, and in May 2004, the county petitioned the court to vacate the arbitrator’s award. Gilmore died later that year, and in 2007, Senior Judge Paul H. Millin of Warren County granted the county’s petition. The union appealed Millin’s ruling to Commonwealth Court.

The county and union were again at loggerheads over a new contract, and the workers went to arbitration over a three-year contract that was to expire at the end of 2009. The second arbitrator did not address the length-of-workday issue, but granted a one-time bonus of $1,200 and an additional 1 percent raise to union members who were employed as of May 3, 2004, the date the county first filed its petition with the court.

In 2008, the probation officers won a round in Commonwealth Court, which reversed Millin’s decision and ruled that the probation officers should be paid for an eight-hour workday. The county appealed to the state Supreme Court, which decided in 2010 not to take the case.

A few days later, President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca changed the length of the probation officers’ workday from 7 1/2 hours to eight hours, but the union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board because the county refused to grant retroactive pay for the extra half-hour. The labor board upheld the workers’ position, and the county took the matter to Commonwealth Court.

The appellate court decided over the summer that the county is responsible to pay workers for the eight-hour workday. “Because (the) county, not the Court of Common Pleas, controls the expenditure of funds, the county has an independent obligation to abide by the award, and it was, therefore, proper to name the county in the unfair labor practice charge. … The county’s failure to retroactively pay the negotiated wage of eight hours of pay per workday is an unfair labor practice that the county must remedy,” wrote Senior Judge Rochelle S. Friedman as part of her 14-page opinion, with Judge Bernard McGinley concurring.

Judge Patricia McCullough wrote as part of her nine-page dissent that the county, acting on behalf of the Court of Common Pleas, is being held liable for the court’s unfair labor practice, which requires a finding of wrongful intent.

Ultimately, “the county commissioners were faced with an irreconcilable conflict: the commissioners could either represent the interests of the Court of Common Pleas, a coordinate and equal branch of government, as they are obligated to do so under the County Code; or, the commissioners could forego their statutory duty to represent the (court),” yield to the terms of the arbitrator’s award and pay the employees in accordance.

“Either way, the county commissioners could not do both, for this would essentially amount to a conflict of interest,” McCullough wrote. “The majority and the PLRB de-couple pay from work and hold the agent, the county, liable for not paying extra money when no extra work was performed. If the union had wanted to preserve this issue, it should have directed its members to work the extra half hour, (example, through lunch), during the time period at issue… The county should not be held strictly and vicariously liable for the alleged unfair labor practices stemming from the Court of Common Pleas’ decision not to implement the (initial arbitration) award just because the county has the ‘deep pocket.'”

She called the majority opinion at odds with the state Constitution, saying that the PLRB should have sustained the county’s exceptions and the PLRB should be reversed.

Appealing the Commonwealth Court decision is not the only labor issue with which the county is dealing.

Court-appointed and court-related employees, who are not permitted to strike, for the first time in recent memory asked a panel of labor arbitrators to hand down a binding contract.

Their old contract expired Dec. 31, 2012, and with nearly three-quarters of the year gone, the labor arbitrators set an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2016, on the new pact. The employees will be receiving average wage increases of 3 percent per year.

Health care is converted to a $500 deductible per individual and a $1,000 deductible per family. Employee contributions to the health insurance premium are set at 7 percent effective Jan. 1, 2015, and 10 percent effective Jan. 1, 2016.

The contract also includes an addition of $150 on-call pay for district judge office personnel for arraignments outside regular office hours when the office is assigned rotating night and weekend duty.

Meanwhile, a collective bargaining session was scheduled for late Tuesday afternoon between the county and members of the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Pennsylvania, which represents employees of the Washington County Health Center, Arden.

Other SEIU members in other parts of county government are also working under the terms of their previous pact, which expired Dec. 31, 2012. Unlike the probation officers and the court-appointed, court-related workers, they have the right to strike, a situation which has not occurred since the 1990s.

Together, the Washington County SEIU locals represent approximately 500 employees.

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