By: Jim Cline and Geoff Kiernan
In Allegheny County Jail, a Pennsylvania arbitrator found that the county violated its CBA when it expanded its random call provision to include officers with suspensions unrelated to violations of the Sick Leave Policy. The CBA provision at issue allowed management to randomly call any officer that called in sick to ascertain and/or confirm the illness or injury. But the random phone calls where only supposed to be made to an officer who has reached “suspension level” in the progressive disciplinary procedure.
The county was concerned that individuals were using there sick leave as extra vacation days, which resulted in excessive overtime payments and forced other officers to work double shifts. By being able to expand the random calls the county would be able to better prevent sick leave abuse, and thus save the county some extra money.
The union vehemently opposed the counties new sick leave policy. The two sides were unable to reach an agreement in bargaining and the matter was decided by an interest arbitrator. However neither side liked the interest arbitrator’s decision so the parties met and reached a different agreement. Under that agreement the county could randomly call an employee on sick leave when that employee has reached “suspension level in the Progressive Disciplinary Procedure”.
But soon after the agreement was implemented the county began adding names to random call list that had been suspended for reasons other than sick leave violations. The county asserted that the language of the policy did not specify as to whether the suspension needs to be related to a sick leave violation so their interpretation was permissive.
The Union maintained that reason for this policy was to keep track of employees that abused the Sick Leave Policy. Thus the County violated the policy when it added officers to the suspension/call list that had been suspended for reasons other than sick leave violations.
The arbitrator disagreed with the county’s interpretation of the contract. He found that the county was reading one section of the policy out of context and failed to take into account the entire purpose and text of the policy:
The determination of the instant grievance turns on a single sentence…”the random phone call are only to be made once the correctional officer has reached the suspension level in the Progressive Disciplinary Procedure. From here, one must turn to paragraph B under the topic “Abuse of Sick Leave” and a single sentence which reads, “Employees who report off…[will be disciplined] in accordance with the Allegheny County Progressive Disciplinary Procedure.
The arbitrator said when these two sentenced are coupled together it becomes clear that only employees who were suspended for violating the sick leave policy should be subject to the random call list.
This case provides some good examples of contract interpretation principles and the reasoning of arbitrators. The result here is what would have been expected from most arbitrators.
Contract clauses should be interpreted in the context of other related CBA language as well as the CBA as a whole. Language should be interpreted in the context of the parties’ apparent intent. Sensible policy often is a good indicator of that intent.
In that case the interpretation offered by the county just did not appear to be the type of policy that the union likely would have agreed to. Allowing the employer this right to these random and intrusive checks makes more sense in the context of individuals who have been already established to be “sick leave abusers.” It is unlikely that most unions would have agreed to random checks for all. The employer wanted a broader management right, but it was one that it had never negotiated for.
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