Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
Elgin Firefighters Local 439 filed a motion Monday with the Circuit Court of Cook County Chancery Division to dismiss an arbitrator’s March ruling that Elgin could continue with reduced minimum shift manning from 36 to 34 workers that it put in place in January 2012.
The motion notes that in December 2011, the city requested that the union continue with an agreement allowing the lesser staffing level that it had first entered in February 2010. The union told the city it had no interest in doing so.
The union filed a grievance in October 2013, which it advanced to arbitration in December 2013. Arbitrator Edwin Benn conducted three arbitration hearings in 2014 and this March found in favor of the city, the motion notes.
The motion claims Benn “evidenced partiality and/or misconduct prejudicing the rights of the Union when he failed to make credibility findings; when he ruled at hearing that the language of the Variance Agreement was ambiguous, and then found in his Award that the language was unambiguous; when he ruled at hearing, prior to all of the evidence being heard, that it was not the City’s intent to establish minimum manning after the expiration of the Variance Agreement; and when he failed to examine all of the evidence and found the language of the Variance Agreement to be unambiguous.”
It also claims Benn “exceeded his authority, inter alia, by amending, modifying, nullifying, ignoring, adding to, and subtracting from the provisions of the Agreement and Variance Agreement when he held that the City had the unilateral right to change minimum shift manning.”
Calling the ruling in favor of Elgin, against public policy, arbitrary and capricious, the motion to dismiss states Benn’s award “did not draw its essence from the contract because it amended, modified, nullified, ignored, added to, and subtracted from the provisions of the Agreement and Variance Agreement by holding that the City had the unilateral right to change minimum shift manning.”
Elgin firefighters have been working without a contract since January of 2014. Union President, Elgin Fire Cpt. Vince Rychtanek, said he expects that matter of the contract will be before an arbitrator this fall and that manning levels once more will be a point of contention.
thanks Dan
