By: Loyd Willaford and Matt Baker
In Forest Preserve District of Cook County v. Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 166, two Forest Preservation sergeants challenged the Forest District’s decision to withhold overtime opportunities from them. The sergeants attempted to work shifts during which only one other sergeant was scheduled. A previous order by the District indicated that two sergeants would always be scheduled for these shifts. Relying on this policy, the sergeants submitted their names for overtime shifts but were denied. The sergeant’s Union challenged the District and an arbitrator issued the sergeants an award. The District appealed and an Illinois appellate court upheld the arbitrator award.
In January, 2011, Sergeant Jerry Paszek submitted a request for time off and was denied. He filed a grievance but the arbitrator found for the Forest District, holding that Paszek had been properly denied because the District had articulated a policy whereby it required at least two sergeants scheduled for each shift. If Paszek had taken time off, there would have been only one sergeant on duty. In 2012, Paszek and another sergeant, Joe Shukstor, filed another grievance against the District. They alleged that they had improperly been denied overtime when they requested to work certain shifts. Each of these overtime shifts had only one sergeant working them. The policy articulated in Paszek’s first grievance required two sergeants at every shift, but by denying Paszek and Shukstor, the District ensured that each shift would only be staffed by one sergeant.
The arbitrator in this second grievance found for the Union. The arbitrator held that the District had acted arbitrarily by articulating one policy and then violating it to deny overtime shifts later. The District could not articulate a reason why it had acted one way in one case and another in a different case:
The arbitrator found that (having) “no” reason was insufficient to meet the relaxed standard of review in this management rights case and justify the District’s managerial decision. Accordingly, the arbitrator concluded that the District’s decision to not have two sergeants working on the second and third shifts on the dates in question was arbitrary and that the sergeants’ grievances had merit.
The District challenged the arbitrator’s award, but an Illinois Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. The Court noted that judicial review of an arbitrator’s award is “very limited”, and noted that the arbitrator had stuck to the words of the bargaining agreement. The arbitrator had also not violated the managerial discretion of the District because he did not speak to the staffing policies of the District, but had merely found their change of stated policy to be arbitrary.
This case is a very good illustration of the difficulty in reversing an arbitration award in court. Even where an arbitrator’s award appears to intrude on management (or union) right, courts will normally not set aside an award unless the award is directly contradicting the contract itself, meaning he arbitrator lacked authority to issue the award or the award is somehow irrational. Here, the District was in essence complaining that the indirect result of the award was to limit management rights to schedule. Since the arbitrator merely ruled that the District’s failed to follow a policy involving scheduling which was incorporated into the contract, the ruling did not violate the contract. It also worth noting that the Court ruled that the arbitrator was allowed to consult sources such as treatises, when deciding he case, so long as the arbitrator does not rely on those sources as the sole basis for the decision. The Arbitrator must base the decision in the contract.
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