IBPO Wins Shift Bidding Arbitration
January 4, 2012
A veteran police dispatcher in Bellows Falls, Vermont will be made whole after an arbitrator ruled the department’s new rotating shift schedule violated the contract.
“The employer can’t simply change the way the department practiced shift-based scheduling for decades,” said Rebecca Mitchell, the IBPO attorney who won the case at arbitration. “You can’t change the common understanding of a term in the contract. The arbitrator agreed and ordered our member made whole.”
Background
IBPO Local 626 consists of full-time police officers, part-time officers, dispatchers, and temporary employees covering for officers serving in the military. Contractual language says that full-time dispatchers will work a normal work week of five consecutive eight-hour days. Shift bidding for dispatchers is to be conducted by seniority each May and November. Any changes to the schedule because of that shift bidding will become effective on the first full pay periods in July and January.
In May 2011, however, the department issued a new schedule. The full-time dispatchers would still work five days on and two days off, but they would now have to rotate schedules every six weeks. For example, a dispatcher would work the 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. shift for six weeks, then rotate to the 4:00 p.m.-midnight shift for six weeks, and then to the midnight-8:00 a.m. shift.
A dispatcher with the most seniority, a single mother, filed a grievance with the union against the shift change. The change in schedule, argued the union, violated the scheduling language in the contract. The department denied the grievance, saying that there were important policy advantages to moving dispatchers throughout the schedule. The grievance finally went to arbitration in September 2011.
Arbitration: What does “shift” mean?
Reconciling the language of the contract with the new “dynamic” scheduling system, the arbitrator said, comes down to the way the parties who agreed to the contract understood the word “shift.” The dictionary definition highlights the portion of the day that a worker typically works, such as the “morning shift” or the “swing shift.” Most people use the term “shift” to refer to a static schedule, not a changing one.
The arbitrator determined the contract language concerning the term “shift” was unclear, and looked at the parties’ history to clarify the meaning of the ambiguous term in the contract. The arbitrator noted that, for decades, the department had relied on static, stable shifts to staff the dispatcher function.
It is fair to expect then, that when the language was adopted the parties meant the word “shift” in a way that was consistent with their own experience: as a static schedule, not as a dynamic one, and not one that would change the employees’ hours of work every 6 weeks.
While the grievant might still enjoy some of the benefits of her seniority in such a dynamic scheduling system, it was clear that the change “can and has cheapened the coin of seniority,” said the arbitrator. The unilateral change to a dynamic shift schedule, he ruled, was beyond the reasonable expectations of the people who first reached that agreement, and therefore violated the contract.
“The dispatcher worked hard for years to move up the ladder to first shift, but all that hard work was unilaterally razed to the ground when the employer instituted the rotating shift system,” said Attorney Mitchell. “It not only removed the value and benefit of her seniority, but essentially voided the whole principle of seniority having a benefit. Fortunately, the arbitrator agreed with us regarding the fundamental value of seniority in any union contract, gave us a clear stance on the term ‘shift’ and restored the value to her seniority.”
The department was ordered to prepare, open to bid, and finalize a static shift schedule in compliance with the contract in time for a December implementation. The grievant was to be made whole for the vacation time she used for child care purposes, including any time she would use until the implementation of the corrected schedule.