The city’s management and professional employee union is now 35 members smaller thanks to a decision from the Connecticut Board of Labor Relations.
On May 7, the board ruled that the union, Local 3144, must exclude seven classifications of city employees from its ranks thanks to a successful membership challenge by the city alleging that those employees were not truly supervisors.
Those newly 3144-excluded positions are Administrative Assistant I, Administrative Assistant II, AIDS Prevention Outreach Worker, Computer Lab Tech, Fiscal Account Specialist, Personal Computer Support Tech, and Site Coordinator and Utilization Monitor. Thirty-five city employees currently fill those positions, bringing the local union’s membership down to around 340.
Click here to download the labor board’s decision, and here to read a story about the former local union president’s opposition to the city’s 2015 challenge.
Local 3144 had a membership meeting planned Wednesday afternoon to fill in members on the ruling.
This particular challenge to the union membership dates back to April 2015, when the city first filed a petition with the state labor relations board seeking clarification of eligible membership in the supervisory and professional union.
According to the board’s decision, the board held 16 hearings on the petition between January 2016 and October 2018.
Kevin Murphy, the director of collective bargaining and organizing for Local 3144’s parent union AFSCME Council 4, noted that the city’s initial challenge threatened to remove upwards of 200 employees from the union.
Even though significantly fewer wound up being affected, he said, this will still be quite the change for public employees who were hired with the understanding they would be part of Local 3144, and now are being jettisoned through no action of their own.
“The members, they were placed in 3144,” he said. “They were accustomed to working under 3144.”
Murphy said that 99 percent of these newly excluded employees will almost certainly end up in another city’s clerical employees union, Local 884. Since they more than likely remain represented by an AFSCME union, he said, he doesn’t understand why the city went to such lengths to challenge the 3144 membership.
“The expense, the aggravation,” he said. “I don’t see what the purpose was, other than to show, ‘We can do it.’”
“The Local 3144 Executive Board and its members are very saddened by the State Labor Board’s decision,” Local 3144 President Malinda Figueroa added. ‘It was a hard fought case that should have never have been initiated against a bargaining unit that has existed with these titles for the past 36 years. These hard working individuals deserved better from their employer for their dedication to the City of New Haven and its residents.”
The city’s spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
This is austerity----get used to it.