By Mitchel Wilson
In City of Inkster, 131 LA 1179 (Brodsky, 2013), Arbitrator Deborah Brodsky concluded that the Michigan City violated the CBA when it deducted the pro rata remainder of equipment allowances paid to officers in a lump sum at the start of the year. The deduction was improper because the CBA only allows for the deduction when an officer is “terminated” but in this case, the officers were laid off and subject to return.
In the face of budget cuts, 11 officers were laid off pending return. In their layoff notice, the officers were informed that besides losing their jobs, the pro-rata remainder of an annual allowance paid to them in one installment would be deducted from their last paycheck. Several officers only received notice when they received their paychecks.
The Union filed grievances saying that the deduction violated the CBA because the officers were not “terminated.” The Acting Police Chief denied the grievances and the Union appealed to arbitration pursuant to the CBA.
The City contended that the Union failed to give verbal notice of the grievance in a timely manner and filed the grievances late. However, the arbitrator ruled that the City had waived both issues because it had ample time and failed to address either of these issues in a timely manner when it brought the first argument up at the hearing and the second in a post-hearing brief.
The relevant CBA equipment allowance language provides: “If an employee terminates his employment during the fiscal year and after he has received such equipment allowance for that fiscal year, he shall return his unearned pro-rata share of such performance allowance.”
The Union argued, and the arbitrator agreed, that although the City may recover the allowance remainder in some circumstances, it did not apply here because the officers were not terminated. The arbitrator explained that a lay-off may become a termination but, pursuant to this CBA, it only occurs when the officer has been laid off for either a year or the duration of seniority, whichever is longer. Furthermore, she reasoned, the City must provide the officer with notice of the termination after the time period is reached. Here, that period had not elapsed and notice was never given. In any case, she concluded, any lay-off termination would occur after the year the allowance had been given and therefore would not be recoverable because there would be no pro-rata remainder left.
