PORT ANGELES — A union representing Clallam County employees has won a grievance against the county and a significant award in arbitration.
County officials say they won’t honor the award to Teamsters Local 589 because it is illegal to pay hourly employees for time they did not work and that if forced to do so, layoffs are possible.
Arbitrator James Lundberg ruled May 27 that Clallam County violated a collective bargaining agreement when it placed about 45 union employees on a 37½-hour work week in January of 2014 and again in January 2015.
Lundberg ordered the county to “cease and desist” from departing from a normal 40-hour work week and ordered the county to back-pay the affected workers with interest from Jan. 13, 2014.
“Although we have not precisely calculated that amount, we certainly believe it to be in excess of $150,000,” Teamsters Local 589 representative Dan Taylor told commissioners in the public comment period of Tuesday’s business meeting.
“This is unfortunate, because during the last contract negotiations the county’s negotiating team proposed to settle the grievance for just $33,000,” Taylor continued.
“The union negotiating team accepted the proposal and the membership ratified it, only to have the Board of (County) Commissioners repudiate the settlement and force the union to proceed with arbitration.”
According to Taylor, County Administrator Jim Jones testified under oath that the county would not honor the arbitrator’s award and would “simply lay off enough Teamsters to pay for the award” if a court ruled in the union’s favor.
“The union will regard any of these layoffs as retaliatory,” Taylor said.
“So I ask the commission, which commitment do they intend to honor?”
Commissioners did not respond to Taylor’s public remarks.
However, they did discuss the arbitrator’s decision in a Monday work session, saying it represented an illegal gift of public funds.
“We don’t really care what the arbitrator says,” Commissioner Mike Chapman said in the work session.
“We’ve got a law that our commissioners are going to live under. That’s the argument. End of story.”
Jones confirmed Friday that the county is filing an appeal to overturn the arbitrator’s award on the advice of legal counsel.
“In our state, you cannot order an employer to do something that is illegal under state law,” Jones said.
“We cannot pay hourly workers in any way, shape, or form for hours they did not work. We simply could not do it.”
Jones said the $33,000 that Taylor referenced was one of five separate components of a proposed settlement agreement.
Commissioners were on board with three of the five items, including the $33,000 payment, Jones said.
“It was ‘take all five or leave it,’” said Jones, who would not discuss the rest of the proposed settlement because of the active litigation.
The arbitration affects “Addendum C” Teamsters employees — hourly workers with commercial driver’s licenses.
Most of those employees are in the road department. A few are in the parks department.
If a court forces the county to award full back-pay to those Teamsters, Jones has been directed by the commissioners to make up the difference by cutting salaries.
That would likely result in layoffs.
“It’s a tough thing,” Jones said.
“In no way, shape, or form is anybody, least of all me, intending to do anything to hurt any of our employees. We respect the heck of them.”
Jones said the now-public battle is based on what he described as an illegal arbitration ruling.
“It’s not personal,” Jones added.
“It’s not trying to union-break. We’re doing what our legal counsel tells us is the only legal thing we can do.”
At the arbitration hearing in April, union attorney Michael McCarthy of the Seattle firm Reid, McCarthy, Ballew & Leahy, LLP, said the county agreed in December 2014 to put Addendum C employees on a 40-hour schedule.
McCarthy alleged that the county then budgeted for a 37 1/2-hour week for those workers without telling the union.
An audio file of the union’s closing argument was provided to the Peninsula Daily News by an anonymous county staffer who asked not to be identified.
“Permitting the county now to repudiate the commitment it made is to give it the advantage of a classic bait and switch,” McCarthy said in his argument.
“They induced us to ratify in reliance upon their repeated statements. To permit them now to repudiate it is to give them the benefit of a shell game.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
