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Paid Sick Days An Issue Again - Hartford Courant
05-February-2010
HARTFORD — - One day into the legislative session, Rep. Selim G. Noujaim is already crafting his argument against a measure that would require businesses to give their employees paid sick days.
"We cannot let this bill go through," Noujaim, a Waterbury Republican, said at a meeting of the legislature's labor and public employees committee Thursday. He noted that the issue came up only 24 hours after lawmakers and the governor agreed that job growth was their top priority.
Businesses are already having a difficult time, he said, and another mandate is not the best way for the state to retain businesses and help them thrive.
No bill requiring paid sick days has been drafted yet, though such a requirement is being considered by the labor committee. Noujaim, however, is anticipating future debate, and Sen. Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, co-chairwoman of the committee, confirmed his fears.
Legislation requiring paid sick days will be her "top priority" this year, Prague said, noting that businesses do not benefit from making ill employees go to work.
Germs can spread, health care bills will rise and a sick worker is rarely productive, she said.
The debate over paid sick days is not new. In 2009, a bill that would have required businesses with 50 or more employees to give workers six sick days was amended and then passed by the state House of Representatives. It was never brought up in the Senate.
In 2008, a similar bill passed the Senate but did not come to a vote in the House.
Although past bills have failed, Prague says she expects this year to be different.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell could be an obstacle — she opposes the concept.
The Connecticut Business & Industry Association also opposes the bill and will continue to lobby against it, said Kia Murrell, assistant counsel for the association.
In today's economy, business is unpredictable and more mandates could harm the state and make businesses less competitive, she said.
"Things like that threaten to push people off the edge when they are just hanging on," Murrell said.
Backing the legislation is Connecticut Working Families, a union-backed political party.
A spokesman, Joe Dinkin, said his group is cautiously optimistic this year and will continue to push the issue.
While Prague believes requiring paid sick days makes sense, she said the recent H1N1 scare reinforces the need for such a law.
A similar bill requiring paid sick days is making its way through Congress, and several members of Connecticut's delegation are pushing for its passage.
| | | Unexpected Rise in U.S. Jobless Claims - New York Times
05-February-2010
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.
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The New York Times
And a second report by the Labor Department showed that people with jobs worked harder in the fourth quarter.
In the jobless filings report, the agency said that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 8,000, to a seasonally adjusted 480,000. Wall Street economists had expected a drop to 460,000. The rise is the fourth in the last five weeks. Most economists had hoped that claims would resume the downward trend that was evident in the fall and early winter.
The four-week average, which smoothes fluctuations, rose for the third consecutive week, to 468,750.
The figure is the highest in the last two months.
The Labor Department is scheduled to report the January employment figures, which are expected to show a tiny gain in jobs, on Friday. The unemployment rate is forecast to stay at 10 percent.
The number of people continuing to claim benefits was unchanged at 4.6 million. That data lags initial claims by a week.
But the so-called continuing claims do not include millions of people who have used up the regular 26 weeks of benefits typically provided by states, and are receiving extended benefits for up to 73 additional weeks, paid for by the federal government.
More than 5.8 million people were receiving extended benefits in the week ended Jan. 16, the latest data available, up from about 5.6 million the previous week. The extended benefit data isn’t seasonally adjusted and is volatile from week to week.
Still, the increasing number of people claiming extended unemployment insurance indicates hiring has not picked up.
Among the states, Oregon reported the largest increase in claims, with 4,336. Puerto Rico and Hawaii also reported increases. The state data lags initial claims by one week.
California reported the largest drop in claims, a decline of 22,674. Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Missouri also reported decreases.
In a separate report, the Labor Department said that worker productivity rose more than expected in the fourth quarter as companies squeezed more output from their employees.
Productivity rose by a seasonally adjusted 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter, above analysts’ expectations of a 6 percent rise.
The increase follows two quarters of sharply rising productivity. Over all, productivity has risen 5.1 percent in the last four quarters, the most since the 12 months that ended with the first quarter of 2002.
Productivity often rises at the end of recessions as companies ramp up output before hiring new workers. Rising productivity can raise living standards in the long run. But it can also make it easier for companies to postpone hiring.
| | | Pratt Workers Scramble To Deal With Plant Closing - Courant.com
05-February-2010
By ERIC GERSHON
The Hartford Courant
February 5, 2010
Peter Tirado is no fan of plant closings, and no stranger to them. In 23 years with Pratt & Whitney in the company's home state, he's been through two.
Each time he escaped with a job at a surviving Pratt factory, landing at the company's Cheshire jet engine overhaul and repair factory in 2002. He works there as a painter-sprayer, applying protective coatings and varnishes to engine parts.
But with Cheshire on the chopping block since September, Tirado, 46, hasn't been counting on a lucky streak that never dies. "You don't stand still for Pratt," he said. "Because Pratt doesn't stand still for you."
So, even in the midst of a union lawsuit to postpone the plant closing, Tirado has been actively looking at other ways to make a living. And he's not alone.
For a week now, Tirado and about 1,000 other Pratt workers, most of them in the Machinists union, have been anxiously waiting for a federal judge to decide whether the company may immediately start shutting down Cheshire and an East Hartford unit. A decision against them in the union's case against Pratt would cost them all their jobs by early 2011.
Most of the workers, who make a basic wage of $34 an hour on average, would be let go this year, in the midst of the weakest labor market in more than 30 years. Pratt is eager to take advantage of lower costs in the American South and in Asia.
No one knows exactly how many workers are seriously pursuing a Plan B, but a couple dozen union members have left already, according to Wayne McCarthy, president of the Machinists local lodge in Cheshire. With an average age of over 50, some of the remaining 650 Cheshire Machinists are contemplating retirement, he said.
But most are not ready to retire, so they're calculating how far savings, severance pay and unemployment benefits could carry them after they're laid off.
Tirado learned auto body painting as a teenager in Waterbury and has kept a hand in it, mainly "for the love of it," he said, but also as a hedge against unemployment.
"If I have to have another job in the next few months, the quickest is to go to a body shop," he said in a recent interview.
He previously worked in a Pratt plant in Southington (closed in the 1990s) and one in North Haven (closed in 2002), as well as in East Hartford, before coming to Cheshire. Along the way, he was laid off once, then rehired.
Besides auto body work, Tirado is considering an entrepreneurial venture; he has approached the owner of a small liquor store in the Unionville section of Farmington to inquire about buying it.
"He knows that I'm interested," said Tirado, who has his eye on the building as well as the business. "He's talking it over with his family."
McCarthy, president of the Cheshire lodge, said 20 to 30 Machinists have resigned since September, including about a dozen workers, generally low in seniority, who took offers with another United Technologies Corp. division, Sikorsky Aircraft.
"They've already left," said McCarthy, a key figure in the five-day trial in Judge Janet C. Hall's Bridgeport courtroom on Jan. 13. Machinists from Cheshire and the threatened East Hartford airfoil repair unit attended every day, taking up about half of the spectators' gallery.
Inundated with orders for its military helicopters, Stratford-based Sikorsky is one of UTC's best-performing units.
McCarthy said "a lot" of salaried engineers at Cheshire also have left, with many transferred elsewhere within Pratt or UTC. A Pratt spokesman said employment has fallen by 4 percent, or 30 people, since July — fewer than 10 of them Machinists.
Few Cheshire Machinists have been able to line up work with Pratt's Middletown and East Hartford plants, and most of the plant's remaining 650 union workers are still employed there and hoping for a ruling in their favor.
"We're not dead yet," McCarthy said.
Whatever Hall's decision in the case, there is good reason for workers to keep looking for new jobs, scarce though they may be: Even a ruling for the union won't prevent Pratt from closing Cheshire after the Machinists' current contract expires in December. It would merely complicate the task for the company.
"It will only be a later date, that's all," said Maureen Cassidy, a 54-year-old Cheshire worker with 30 years' experience at Pratt. "All of us have to start looking ahead."
For her, that has meant returning to school part time, on Mondays, to study criminal justice. (UTC pays for most higher education for employees under a long-standing corporate policy.) Cassidy, who cares for her mother and a sister, hopes to find a job with the Department of Homeland Security, perhaps at an airport.
She's also looking for other work — "looking continuously, every day, at what's out there, which isn't very much."
Connecticut's unemployment rate stands at 8.9 percent, its highest since 1976. Nationally, unemployment stood at 10 percent in December, with January figures due out this morning.
Cassidy, who grew up in Southington and lives there still, figures she will last at Cheshire longer than most. Given her seniority, she thinks she'll be among the last to walk out the door.
But she finds little comfort in that. "It's like the end of the world moving over my head," she said. "Thirty years of my life I spent there. It's all I've ever done. I try not to think about it, because when I do, I panic."
At the East Hartford airfoil repair unit that would also be closed, many workers will be able to transfer under union rules into other Pratt units, according to Juan Gelabert, president of the Machinists local lodge there. They will bump less senior workers into unemployment.
Tirado, a cheerful bear of a man with a bone-crushing handshake, had hoped his children, teenagers now, might work at Pratt one day.
Even so, he says he's not bitter about the situation.
"The company is not a bad company," he said. "That is not what we're saying. We would like to work for this company. I'm not trying to bash the company that has supported me for the last 23 years. We would like to be profitable with the company here."
He knows a mass layoff will be harder for many of his friends and co-workers than for him.
"The decision that the judge would make — on myself, it weighs heavily," said Tirado, whose wife, Cheryl, works in the billing department of a medical practice. "On other people it weighs even heavier, because they may not be as prepared as I am."
Or as young.
"At 63, 64 years old, the opportunities are not as good," he said. At least one Cheshire Machinist is over 70, he said.
Tirado likes the idea of the liquor store, provided he can get the building, too. His stepfather owned grocery stores in Waterbury for decades starting in the mid-1970s, and Tirado worked there in his youth. He stocked shelves, carved meat, fixed refrigerators, ordered supplies, tracked inventory. A small retail operation feels familiar and manageable. He could set the hours and wouldn't need many employees.
"Growing up in the grocery store business with my dad, I was always taught, 'If you're going to buy it, buy it all. ... I'm not a businessman today; I work for UTC. But the skills to cope with a business are there. ... It's in a nice location and I feel that there's potential there for me and my family."
Tirado said he hasn't estimated what kind of income he could earn as the proprietor of a small suburban liquor store. After more than two decades with Pratt, he earns "in the 70s," including overtime pay, he said, far less than the $90,000 that Pratt says is the average pay for Cheshire's Machinists, including overtime.
"It took me 23 years to make that," Tirado said. "It's not like a free ride. You got to work."
And so he would at his liquor store. "I'm preparing for the worst," he said, "and hopefully it'll turn out better."
| | | Stop & Shop Seeks Temporary Replacement Workers In Event Of A Strike
05-February-2010
Stop & Shop Seeks Temporary Replacement Workers In Event Of A Strike
By MARA LEE
The Hartford Courant
February 3, 2010
Stop & Shop, the New England branch of the Dutch-owned Ahold grocery chain, is playing hardball in its union negotiations.
The current contract, which covers about 15,000 Connecticut workers, expires Feb. 20. The chain has been advertising for temporary replacements at $12 an hour for part-time workers and $15 an hour for full-time workers.
The company, which has about 90 stores in the state, ran similar ads three years ago but waited until after the contract had expired. The workers were not used, as there was no strike.
A company spokeswoman declined to say Tuesday if workers would be locked out if the contract expires before an agreement.
"As our negotiations continue, we are mindful of our commitment to our customers," Stop & Shop spokeswoman Faith Weiner said. "We are making contingency plans. These plans include placing ads in local newspapers for temporary workers in order to continue business operations in the event there is a work stoppage."
Brian Petronella, president of one of the two United Food and Commercial Workers Union locals that represent grocery workers throughout the state, said the company's offer on wages and health care is much less generous than the current contract.
Part-time workers, who make up about 80 percent of the workforce, have received hourly raises that totaled $1 over three years under the current contract. Petronella said the company's new offer contains no raises in any of the next three years, but would provide a lump sum of a few hundred dollars in 2010.
He said the company also wants to increase full-time workers' contribution to a family health plan from $60 a month to $300 a month.
Members also are irritated that the ads are offering $3 an hour more than new workers make now, he said. "They want a fair contract. They're not out for anything outrageous."
Shaw's and A&P agreed to raises in their most recent contracts, in 2008 and 2009.
Both sides said they hope to avoid a strike.
"We value our associates, and the contribution they make to our success," Weiner said, "and that is why one of our top priorities is offering our associates a competitive wage and benefit package."
| | | Himes and state legislators warn of budget crunch - CT Post
27-January-2010
President Barack Obama's call for a budget freeze reflects a growing priority to cool off government spending, making it less likely the federal government could again use a massive stimulus bill to prop up revenue-strapped state governments, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., warned local leaders Tuesday.
More serious consideration is being given to ideas like a national infrastructure bank that would include both private and public dollars to build important projects, Himes said.
"The mood in Washington, D.C., has taken a turn in how it is looking at the fiscal situation," Himes said. "We're close to the end of the time when Congress is comfortable with the kind of Keynesian stimulus we have seen in the past year."
Himes and state legislators talked about concerns regarding deficits at the federal and state levels at the legislative breakfast of the South Western Region Metropolitan Planning Organization and the South Western Regional Planning Agency, predicting aid would stay flat or decline.
Leaders urged them to not scrimp on funding needed to upgrade the Metro-North Railroad's New Haven Line and other transportation improvements that will help maintain Fairfield County as a destination for businesses.
"We need to put some gas back in the tank and not take it out," said New Canaan First Selectman Jeb Walker, chairman of SWRPA.
On Monday, Obama announced his proposal for a freeze on most non-military discretionary spending for three years, starting in fiscal year 2011, to help shrink a $1.3 trillion deficit.
The Connecticut General Assembly will convene next Wednesday for a new legislative session, where it will attempt to close a $500 million budget deficit this fiscal year. The state faces a projected $12.5 billion deficit through 2014.
State leaders can no longer defer budgeting to cover long-term commitments, including an expected $40 billion in unfunded pension, health, and other benefits for state employees, State Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, said.
Legislators need to make labor more affordable, while lowering state and local taxes that discourage economic growth, he said.
"The mood has to change very quickly," Frantz said. "If you look at the rate of growth of the government for the past 26 years, it is far ahead of the consumer price index or the growth in actual income for residents. I'm afraid we need a fiscal catastrophe before people in Hartford really get it."
State Rep. Bruce Morris, D-Norwalk, said state budget cuts that affect lower and middle income families should be scrutinized for cost effectiveness, highlighting Gov. M. Jodi Rell's proposal this winter to abolish the state's Commission on Children as an example of austerity that would have taken essential benefits from children in low-income families. The commission has spearheaded initiatives in school readiness and early childhood education.
"I know we need to make some cuts but they need to be strategic," Morris said. "People are concerned that we are spending 40 percent on health and human services ... well, that is going to continue in this economy."
Walker said funding railroad station upgrades, guaranteeing timely delivery and introduction of the new M-8 railroad cars as well as other rail and bus transit initiatives, should be a fiscal priority for the state to help nurture economic prosperity in Fairfield County.
"Continuing the financial commitment to the New Haven line and rehabilitating existing infrastructure are critical," Walker said. "No one can argue with the need to improve and modernize those facilities."
| | | Courant.com
27-January-2010
January 27, 2010
NEW BRITAIN —
The city's legislative delegation got a taste Tuesday of what the next General Assembly session may bring: demands for spending cuts alongside demands to protect programs.
About 15 people came to a public forum at the senior center and several urged legislators to keep funding social service programs that benefit the city's large population of poor and elderly.
Others insisted the General Assembly should show more leadership in cutting costs to close the $500 million deficit projected in this year's budget.
"It's getting worse, and everyone is waiting for someone else to do something," said Helene Groman, a board member of the Citizen Property Owners Association of New Britain. "I expect you people to have the answers. All I can see is everyone is passing the buck."
But state Sen. Donald DeFronzo, Rep. Tim O'Brien and Rep. Peter Terczyak — all Democrats — said the General Assembly endorsed $200 million in spending cuts that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell still hasn't implemented.
Ann Mikulak, president of the taxpayers association, said that as a retired state employee, she'd be willing to skip her cost-of-living pension increase to help balance the budget. Terczyak replied that legislators can't negotiate contracts, and that only two people have the authority to negotiate a cost-of-living increase giveback: the head of her union and Rell.
"I can no more do that than I can stop someone for speeding," Terczyak said.
DeFronzo said the city's delegation will work to maintain state aid to education, Dial-a-Ride, nursing homes, after-school programs, domestic violence shelters and the Spanish Speaking Center. He said the budget dispute between Rell and the General Assembly is not merely partisan, but reflects fundamental policy differences.
"The governor wants [tax] breaks for the wealthy," he said. "There's a fundamental difference in values and perspectives."
When Terczyak asked "To balance the budget, what benefit are you getting now that you're willing to give up or reduce?" the audience was silent.
"We've been hearing politicians say 'cut the waste' since Richard Nixon," said Terczyak. "Show me the waste and I'll go after it."
| | | Foxwoods, UAW Agree On Contract For Table-Game Dealers - Courant.com
27-January-2010
The Hartford Courant
January 27, 2010
Thousands of table-game dealers at Foxwoods Resort Casino reached their first labor contract with the Indian tribe that owns the casino on Tuesday, positioning them to become the largest group of union-represented dealers at any U.S. casino.
Foxwoods, owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, is the nation's largest casino.
The tentative deal, announced Tuesday afternoon, covers 2,500 workers at Foxwoods and the MGM Grand at Foxwoods. Subject to a ratification vote by the union membership, it would provide scheduled pay increases, offer job protections and govern working conditions.
The deal comes more than two years after the Foxwoods dealers first voted to organize through the United Auto Workers, in November 2007, and more than one year after the Pequots and the UAW agreed to negotiate a contract under tribal law rather than under U.S. law.
Foxwoods aggressively resisted the dealers' efforts to bring them to the bargaining table under U.S. law, even after a series of National Labor Relations Board rulings in the union's favor. Tribal law does not allow the union to strike. In the event of an impasse, the parties would seek arbitration.
Casino workers elsewhere are represented by unions, but few, if any on this scale. The UAW itself represents workers, including some dealers, at three small non-tribal casinos in Detroit and others in Atlantic City. The Teamsters represent a small group of workers at a Pennsylvania operation of Mohegan Sun, according to a spokesman for the Mohegan Tribe.
None of Mohegan Sun's Connecticut workers are represented by labor unions, spokesman Chuck Bunnell said.
"In terms of scale, this is definitely a precedent-setting agreement," said Greg Guedel, chairman of the Native American practice group at the Seattle law firm of Foster Pepper.
After delaying a deal for years, Foxwoods has agreed to one as it faces the gravest financial peril of its 18-year history. The Pequots are struggling to restructure debts estimated at about $2 billion. The tribe even has explored the possibility of bankruptcy — widely considered to be legally impossible for a Native American tribe — according to sources familiar with the Pequots' strategy.
"To some extent, you wonder whether this timing is just coincidence," Guedel said, noting that, at a minimum, "it's one less thing they have to deal with as they're trying to focus on their future business planning."
Foxwoods would not comment.
The agreement is the culmination of years of effort by at least two unions. After a low-key campaign, Local 217 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union took the first steps toward organizing Foxwoods workers in 1998, when it erected billboards near the casino asking employees concerned about working conditions to call a toll-free number. The UAW much later succeeded in securing support among the dealers.
George Taylor, a blackjack dealer at Foxwoods for the past 15 years, and a member of the union's negotiating committee, said he expects the membership to approve the contract in a vote scheduled for Friday.
The tentative deal would provide a 12 percent wage increase over two years, extend medical leave time for seriously ill workers, codify the dealers' right to control distribution of their tips and establish job protections based on seniority. It also would establish a 24-table smoke-free gambling pit.
Table game dealers at Foxwoods earn about $35,000 per year on average, most of it from tips.
"I'm very confident that it will [pass]," Taylor said. "We've been waiting for a very long time. We stood together and we haven't broken down."
Speaking for himself, he said the contract would mean knowing that "my job is secure, that I got somebody watching my back if something happens at work."
Only members of UAW Local 2121 will be allowed to vote Friday, the union said; non-members will be allowed to join on Friday.
Elizabeth Bunn, secretary treasurer of the UAW, said she did not know how many of the 2,500 dealers already are members. "It's not a number that we keep track of," she said.
Taylor would not say whether other groups of workers at Foxwoods — which, with MGM Grand, employs between 9,000 and 10,000 in the state — are now planning to push for union representation. Maintenance workers at the casino overwhelmingly rejected union representation in May 2008.
But he left little doubt that he hoped they would.
"I hope we can inspire other gaming workers to stand together," he said. "If they stand together like we have, they can win."
While the UAW's deal with Foxwoods does not permit workers to strike (or the casino to lock workers out), the union said it retained its rights to seek redress under U.S. federal law should it prove necessary.
The tribe has argued consistently that its status as a sovereign nation positions it beyond the reach of U.S. law — a position that led to Tuesday's deal under the tribe's own laws.
| | | Companies line up for custodial work - The New Haven Register
27-January-2010
NEW HAVEN — With contract negotiations between the Board of Education and school custodians in early stages, eight firms have responded to a city request that would privatize the union’s work.
The city posted a request for proposals last month, seeking bids from firms interested in managing and staffing school custodial work. A committee including New Haven Public Schools and AFB Facilities Management officials will meet to review the proposals. The district has not yet decided whether it ultimately will privatize the work.
“Those bids just came in. We will take the time to look through those and analyze them and determine what the appropriate course of action would be,” said school Chief Operating Officer Will Clark.
City and school officials claim privatizing the work would be less expensive and more reliable, alleging one in four custodians does not report to work on a typical day.
“We found that it was a trend. It wasn’t just one day where there were substantial numbers of employees absent. It happened quite a bit,” said city spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga.
School custodians in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 287, have fought the move towards privatization, filing a complaint with the state Board of Labor Relations. The complaint alleges Clark threatened to contract out their work if they continued to file grievances.
A state hearing on the complaint initially had been set for Friday, but has been postponed due to scheduling conflicts.
“The city is certainly within their rights to put out the (request for proposals) and to accept bids. Our hope is that the bids won’t be awarded because we believe our members do the job well. They do it with great dedication and they do it in a way that is cost effective for the city and the school system,” said AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman.
AFSCME has long fought against private management in the public schools, particularly taking aim at Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. Amid growing concern and union discontent over Aramark performance, the district re-bid food service and facilities management contracts in 2008, both of which had been awarded to Aramark. The district ultimately put management of food service in-house, but decided to retain a new private firm, AFB Facilities Management, to handle school maintenance. AFSCME has continued to push for the ouster of private management.
The custodians’ contract expired June 30, 2008, and new negotiations have just begun.
Union President Rob Montuori said the two sides only recently exchanged initial proposals. Mayorga said the city and the union were in the process of scheduling a meeting.
Custodians are primarily seeking job security, Montuori said.
“There’s always a concern when something like (privatization) is looming out there,” he said.
“But it’s not like they told us, ‘we’re getting rid of you,’ either,” he said. “I think the times are going to dictate what happens.”
The eight firms to submit bids are ABM Janitorial Service North East, Inc., Performance Environmental, UNICCO, GCA Service Group, Service Solutions, Service Management Group, OR&L Custodial Cleaning Services and A&A Maintenance.
| | | Fired public works employee gets his job back - Ct Post
27-January-2010
DERBY -- The city must rescind the firing of one Public Works employee terminated last year under a ruling recently handed down by the state Board of Mediation and Arbitration.
Last March, Alan Jeanetti and Ron Luneau were fired after problems at the town's transfer station surfaced that included incomplete record keeping. The two were the only city workers running the transfer station and, initially, were removed from those positions and assigned to the Town
Garage.
But after they refused to answer questions before the Board of Aldermen, the two were fired, and both appealed that action. The state board's ruling only pertains to Jeanetti. The board has not yet released a decision on Luneau's status.
Under the decision, the city has to reinstate Jeanetti, pay him $5,000 in back pay and restore his pension benefits, which Board of Aldermen president Ken Hughes said will cost about $3,000. The board also deemed that a 60-day suspension would be an appropriate action for the city to have taken.
"Alan Jeanetti will be a Public Works employee again as of tomorrow," Hughes said Tuesday afternoon.
"The state gave him a 60-day suspension and no back pay except for the $5,000, so they obviously saw there was something there," Hughes said. "It could have been a lot worse for the city because they were asking for back pay and vacation and health benefits.
Jeanetti was hired by the city in March 1987 and had been stationed at the Pine Street landfill since March 2006. He holds state certification allowing him to run the landfill and keep the records required by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
But it was discovered two years ago that the city doesn't have the proper state permit to run the station, that the required reports hadn't been submitted to the DEP and the records needed to compile those reports also hadn't been kept, which in part led to the aldermen ousting Jeanetti and Luneau from the landfill in July 2008 and bringing in Annex Associates of New Haven to run the station.
The state earlier found that the removal of Jeanetti and Luneau and the installation of Annex was improper, which led to the decision in December to close the landfill. City officials made an arrangement with the city of Shelton to use its landfill until the permit can be obtained, which could take a year or more, Hughes said.
In its decision, the board found fault on both Jeanetti, for failing to follow regulations in keeping the records, and with the city, for failing to discipline him for those actions prior to his termination. "The discharge of (Jeanetti) was not for just cause under the contract between the parties," the decision states. The discharge is replaced by the 60-day suspension, the decision says, and Jeanetti's seniority will be restored.
Because the landfill is closed, Jeanetti will return to the Public Works department as a regular employee, Hughes said. "He wasn't assigned specifically to the dump so he will return to the regular Public Works rotation," Hughes said.
City officials still believe to be true the findings of the aldermanic subcommittee that investigated the problems and places the blame on Jeanetti and Luneau, Hughes said.
"That is the state's decision but the subcommittee stands behind its report and findings," he said.
I think this is a good victory and a validation both for the grievant and the case we have been making that the town of Derby is willfully mismanaging public resources," said AFSCME Council 4 spokesman Larry Dorman.
"All of this stems from the fact that (city officials) want to privatize the transfer station and I think that is the underlying issue," Dorman said. "They lost the case on Allan, there's another pending and they also lost the decision on how they handled the transfer station when they switch management.
"This validates the concerns we have how the city is managing public resources and their refusal to live by laws that govern everyone else," he said, "and that cost the taxpayers in the end."
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