Herskowitz Asks Labor Board To Nullify
Agreement
by Hugh McQuaid | Sep 2, 2011, CTNewsJunkie.com,
Lisa Herskowitz, the prosecutor who filed a labor complaint to
halt the union re-vote on a $1.6 billion labor concessions agreement, amended
her complaint last week, calling on the Labor Relations Board to invalidate the
contract.
“Now that
the agreement has been passed the Labor Board must declare it null and void and
take [State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition] and the governor and the
unions and employers to task,” she wrote.
In July, Herskowitz filed the
complaint with the state Board of Labor Relations, claiming that
SEBAC overstepped its negotiating authority. A member of the board met
with all parties to the complaint at a closed-door conference in August at
the Department of Labor headquarters in Wethersfield.
The Labor
Board has so far held off on making a decision on the case. Soon after the
meeting, the unions voted overwhelmingly to adopt concession agreements
containing a two-year wage freeze and changes to their healthcare and pension
benefits.
The changes
have already gone into effect, but in her recent Aug. 22 complaint, Herskowitz called on the board to reverse them.
The basis of
her complaint rests on the claim that SEBAC negotiated union employee wage
concessions with representatives of the Gov. Dannel
P. Malloy’s office when it is only statutorily authorized to negotiate changes
to healthcare and pension benefits. Changes to wages are up to the individual
bargaining units to negotiate.
That didn’t
happen, she said and after the more than five hour meeting, that emerged as an
indisputable fact.
“They have
effectively but illegally and intentionally sucked 45,000 state employees into
one monster bargaining unit by usurping our bargaining agents and subjecting
all state employees to their illegal rule,” she wrote.
In her
amendment, Herskowitz said the unions characterize
the talks that led to the wage agreement as “discussions” rather than
“negotiations.” But she contends it does not matter what word they use if in
the end they arrived at a wage agreement.
In the wage
concessions package, state employees were offered four years of job security in
exchange for a two-year wage freeze followed by a 3 percent raise in each of
the three subsequent years.
After the
August meeting, SEBAC lawyer Dan Livingston said that job security can only
feasibly be negotiated on a coalition basis. SEBAC forced the administration to
make an offer protecting workers from layoffs for four years but individual
unions were still free to stick with their original contracts, he said.
But Herskowitz contends that mass layoffs ordered by Malloy
after unions initially rejected the agreement in June, made it difficult for
state employees to stick with their original contracts.
“I’ve heard
from people saying they didn’t know how they could vote ‘no’ again when the
person sitting at the next desk over was crying about how she was going to feed
her kids,” she wrote.
Throughout
the amendment Herskowitz paints Malloy as a coercive
bully and SEBAC and the unions as all too eager to give up their lunch money.
She pointed to union leaders’ decision in July to change SEBAC’s bylaws
to make ratification standards for the second vote easier.
“[Malloy]
also said that he TOLD the unions to change their voting rules. Isn’t that a
prohibited practice for management to tell the unions to change their voting
rules? Clearly coercive. Clearly an
interference with union activity. And the unions did it,” she wrote. “Big surprise.”
Herskowitz’s own union, the Connecticut Association of
Prosecutors, is not even a valid union, she wrote in her amendment. She said
that is because organization is operating under articles of incorporation
rather than bylaws.
Given that
fact, she asked the Labor Relations Board to not only nullify the labor
agreement, but also decertify CAP and reimburse her any dues she previously
paid the group.
“Since we
have not had bylaws for 11 years, and bylaws are what require dues, I request
the board order that the dues that were deducted from my paycheck for the last
11 years be refunded,” she wrote.
The Labor
Board received Herskowitz’s amendment on Aug. 24 and
now must provide a copy to all the parties and give them a chance to respond, DOL
spokeswoman Nancy Steffens said Friday. It’s unclear
when the board will make a decision to pursue or dismiss the case.
CAP
President Jack Doyle said he could not comment on the specifics of the
complaint because it was ongoing. But he is looking for it to be dismissed.
“Anyone is
entitled and has a right to file a complaint. But we feel the complaint should
be dismissed because there is no merit to it,” he said.
SEBAC’s spokesman Matt O’Connor said union leaders
aren’t sweating the complaint, which he called factually inaccurate. Unions are
now focused on moving forward with efforts to get the economy working for
working families, he said.
“Members of
our unions are moving on to the next challenges. And that includes restoring
critical services cut as part of the governor’s alternative budget that have
not yet been reinstated,” he said. “We’re also pushing to get the agreement’s
joint labor-management committees working in order to flatten wasteful layers
of management and implement front-line workers’ recommendations for further
cost savings.”
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