Public Employee Press

TA workers get back blackout leave day

The Transit Authority must restore a day of leave to over 1,000 current DC 37 members who were absent Aug. 15, 2003, due to the blackout.

Arbitrator Jeffrey Selchick ruled April 11 that the TA violated the contract by forcing employees who could not get to work to use leave time if they wanted to be paid for the day.

Union members Rosa Cook, Joan Petrovits and Howard Ader testified about the extreme hardships the blackout caused that made it impossible for them to report to work Aug. 15, 2003, the second day of the power outage that hit the Northeast late the previous afternoon.

The arbiter based his decision mainly on DC 37’s “snow days” arbitration victory after the blizzard of January 1996, which established that under such circumstances, management must exercise its rights in accord with a “rule of reasonableness.”

The cases were handled by union attorney Alan M. Brown, who also argued that the TA’s policy penalized employees for observing directives from the mayor and governor to stay home.