Good Bye To Good Faith
December Is going to be a pivotal month for the future of organized labor in the Virgin Islands.
Today we learned that the American Federation of Teachers voted to extend their contract for an unspecified period of time, even though they were faced with a last minute cancellation of bargaining sessions originally scheduled for this week.
The Virgin Islands Office of Collective Bargaining now says it will come back to the table with the teachers in mid-December, nearly halfway into the school year on the brink of the long holiday break.
No reason was given for the last minute cancellation, and the jury is still out on whether the teachers made the right move in voting to extend their current agreement.
Earlier this summer, the government reacted in exactly the same way when a number of unionized employees filed suit immediately following the enactment of the 8% salary decrease applied to government employees.
After several rounds of legal maneuvering, the unions were forced by a pliable judiciary into combining their suits, subjecting a weak case filed on St. Thomas with a much stronger (and harder to fight) suit filed on St. Croix with a hearing date set for, yes, early December.
The membership of all of these bargaining units should be simmering with outrage at the lack of spine shown by the leadership that collects its dues every month.
At the heart of any collective bargaining agreement is the premise that any action that will result in a change in wages, hours or working conditions must be executed through the reopening of bargaining. The financial condition of the jurisdiction in question is irrelevant – labor law, including the relevant sections of the VI Code, support this element of any negotiate contract.
If this provision does not apply, then what is the value of the contract? What protections do your union dues provide if they do not protect what you are paid, how long you work, or the conditions under which you perform your job?
The decision to delay the combined lawsuit was made by the courts and at that point, the bargaining units ceased any efforts to accelerate the process. But our question is this – all of the unions involved in this lawsuit are part of larger national (and in some cases international) organizations and to our knowledge, at no point did they leverage the power of their parent organizations to address these issues. Again, what are the union members paying for?
The timing of the teachers’ new negotiation schedule, falling after the lawsuit is scheduled to begin, almost guarantees that there will be no movement on their contract issues until the lawsuit is settled. And we have all experienced how slowly the so-called “wheels of justice” can move in the Virgin Islands when the Administration dictates the delay.
And with the opening of the lawsuit so close to the holidays, this issue will stretch far into 2012.
While not a government employment issue, the recent experience of the Wyatt contractors at Hovensa is another example of the ongoing deterioration of organized labor in the VI. When the 100+ employees refused to accept a contract from Wyatt, with their concerns centering on health insurance, the employees found themselves “locked out” of the refinery. This was perfectly legal, as Hovensa has a policy allowing them to lock out (refuse to allow to work) any employees involved in a contract dispute.
On Thursday, union representatives announced that their membership had voted to accept the contract, and that more details on the new arrangement would be explained in more detail on Friday.
But the fact that the Hovensa provisions force employees to either accept what the company proposes, or face lock out from their jobs (even though they showed up daily for work) is another example of the weakness inherent in the employee skewed provisions inherent in VI Labor Law.
There is absolutely no way to predict what the “financial condition” of the Territory will be by the time these negotiations resume. We can only hope (for the sake of the dues paying members) that union “leadership” (and we use that word advisedly) leverages all of the resources at its disposal, and that its members are paying for, to bring some credibility back to the collective bargaining arena.
If they do not, they should just decertify now, because their influence, and their credibility, will be irrevocably damaged.
The GERS Board knew it could not win the case because the Chairman was lying about not knowing that Todmann was being paid for the two jobs he was doing.
Why not charge the board members if they were in on the deal?
I believe the board members will be charged in the process….Todmann will have to implicate others if this goes to trial.
If board members were involved in the Todman embezzlement,that would be a far more egregious matter,and I would definitely have to revisit and revise my earlier comment.
Why doesn’t he take the stand and implicate the board? Why take the fall???