Thomas MacMIllan Photo
City Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden canned two lawyers last month who happened to be the president and vice-president of a newly formed union of City Hall attorneys.
Coincidence?
Yep, Bolden (pictured) said.
Nope, said Jim Del Visco, the fired president of AFSCME Local 1303 – 464.
The union, comprising 11 city attorneys, has filed a complaint with the state Board of Labor Relations, claiming that the city retaliated against its employees for trying to form a union.
“I think the only way you can interpret that is that they were biting the head off of a collective bargaining unit,” Del Visco said.
In January, Del Visco, who’s 51, was told that the city wouldn’t be renewing his annual one-year contract. A senior assistant corporation counsel, he had spent over 17 years as an attorney in the city’s corporation counsel office.
The city also declined to renew annual contracts with Deputy Corporation Counsel Felipe Pastore, and Senior Counsel Timothy Lynch.
Del Visco and Pastore are the president and vice-president of the city attorney’s union, which formed last year.
Del Visco said he and Pastore had never had a negative performance evaluation and were never given any reason why their contracts weren’t renewed.
Click here, here, and here to see Del Visco and Pastore’s performance reviews.
At the time of their dismissal, a press release from the city said only that Corporation Counsel Bolden “did not believe it was in the City’s best interests” to retain the three attorneys.
Asked Monday if he let Del Visco and Pastore go because of their union activities, Bolden said, “The short answer is no.”
He declined to comment further or answer any questions on the labor complaint, beyond issuing this written statement: “As a general matter, I do not engage in extensive press discussions about recently filed matters. This matter should not be treated otherwise. It will be addressed accordingly at the appropriate time.”
The complaint calls for the three attorneys to be reinstated in their City Hall jobs.
“The only outcome we’re interested in is what’s outlined in the remedy,” said AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman. “We want to see the three employees returned to their positions.”
Dorman said the union is looking to arrange an informal hearing in early March. He said Del Visco and Pastore are still president and vice-president of the union, pending the outcome of the complaint.
Reached Monday, Del Visco, who’s married and has two kids, said he hasn’t found a new job. He said he still hopes to return to working at City Hall.
Del Visco said the union began forming a year ago, and was officially certified in April 2013. “Then we entered into negotiations with the city,” Del Visco said.
Del Visco said the lawyers— who now number eight in the corporation counsel office — have two main goals in their first collective bargaining contract with the city. They want better salaries, after not seeing a raise in five years. And they want to set standards of just cause for dismissal. As it is, the city can reappoint lawyers each year, or not, without any explanation.
“There’s no protection for these people,” Del Visco said.
From April until October, negotiations went nowhere. The matter lapsed into arbitration in October, Del Visco said.
Then on Jan. 24, Del Visco said, he was home sick with a bad head cold when someone knocked on his door and handed him a letter: The city wasn’t renewing his contract.
“I was shocked. Absolutely shocked and outraged,” Del Visco said. He said he had been given a performance review only twice in his tenure at City Hall, and “passed with flying colors” each time.
“As far as I know, I was a valued member of the office,” Del Visco said. “I was constantly told that.”
Although his term wasn’t up until Feb. 1, Del Visco was put on administrative leave for his final week. He was allowed to go in on Monday Jan. 27 to clean out his office, but that was it. “We couldn’t complete any of our work. Everything was left hanging.”
“It was very traumatic, and really an awful experience,” Del Visco said.
Del Visco said there can be only one reason why the city didn’t rehire Pastore and him: to stop the union. “That’s how we view it. I don’t know how you could view it any other way.”
“This is an act of anti-union animus on the part of the corporation counsel,” AFSCME spokesman Dorman said. He called it ironic that just as the nascent union was trying to establish the conditions under which someone could be fired, the union leaders were fired.
“We believe they were targeted for their union activity,” Dorman said.
Sorry Mr. Bolden, but the writing is on the wall on this one.
"There's no such thing as a coincidence."- J.Gibbs