IBCO Wins Reinstatement, $45K Settlements For Two Terminated COs
Two corrections officers from the Norfolk County House of Correction who were terminated for excessive absenteeism have won reinstatement and $45,000 each in settlements, thanks to the IBCO and union attorney Timothy Bailey.
The COs in question were longtime employees at Norfolk. Both had suffered ongoing medical ailments, but had provided the necessary medical documentation for their absences. They believed that they had nothing to worry about, until a former human resources director at the HOC fired them in late 2006 for what were termed “excessive absences.”
The IBCO grieved the terminations. When Attorney Bailey reviewed the documents involved in their cases, he discovered serious flaws in management’s justification for termination. For example, he discovered two letters from the same doctor excusing one CO. The language in both letters was identical, except for the date. The HR director approved one of those letters but rejected the other.
“The records definitely gave me the impression that the former human resources director had played fast and loose with the facts to justify those terminations,” said Attorney Bailey. “A single long absence was broken up into several individual absences without any apparent reason, so that she [human resources director] could hide behind ‘progressive discipline’; there were inconsistent standards applied to doctors’ letters. The whole thing didn’t pass the smell test.”
IBCO leaders knew the union’s case was strong and pushed for arbitration. Before arbitration, however, representatives from the office of Norfolk County Sheriff Michael Bellotti met with Attorney Bailey and IBCO Director David Bernard to discuss a resolution. Together, they reached an agreement that returned both COs to work and made $45,000 in settlement payments to each, as well.
“It was the IBCO’s insistence on taking this case to arbitration that pushed the sheriff’s office to consider settling,” said Bernard. “We had the resources to push all the way to arbitration and the experience to do it right, and to their credit, Sheriff Bellotti and his people saw that it was in everyone’s best interest to do right by these members. Now they’ve been restored, and sooner than they would have been if the arbitration had gone forward.”