By: Thomas Hayden, United Staff Association of New Jersey
An arbitrator recently held that the Alabama Education Association (AEA) violated the terms of it’s collective bargaining agreement with its professional staff, represented by the Alabama Professional Staff Organization (APSO), when they issued a 15-day suspension for a member in violation of the contract’s “just cause” provision.
NSO Vice President of Defense Justin Zartman represented APSO and the grievant during the arbitration hearing.
AEA essentially argued their staff must follow a policy which was never communicated and failure to do so was gross insubordination. AEA issued a 15-day suspension to a union member with more than a decade of service.
AEA submitted evidence of phone calls and rumors to bolster their argument for the suspension. However, such evidence was never provided to the union or the grievant prior to the arbitration hearing. Zartman argued that AEA deliberately withheld these unverified claims, choosing to weaponize vague rumors and references to “small town politics” only at arbitration, when the grievant had no meaningful way to address or refute them.
Zartman attacked the employer’s strategy arguing “This tactic was not just irresponsible – it is a blatant abuse of the process and a fundamental betrayal of the employer’s duty to act with fairness and integrity. Such conduct is disgraceful for any employer, but it is especially egregious coming from an organization charged with representing and advocating for education employees across the state of Alabama.”
However, these rumors were nothing more than a red herring. Zartman said this case was about the just cause provision of the CBA- a tenant of any union contract. Using the seven tests of just cause, Zartman argued there was no just cause for any discipline, much less a 15-day suspension. The arbitrator agreed.
No convincing evidence was found by the arbitrator that this supposed rule was communicated to employees. The arbitrator wrote, “When an employer promulgates a rule to apply to its employees, it must communicate that rule, in either written or oral form to the employees before it may consider disciplining them for not following the rule. AEA did not do that in this case.”
As such, the employer was found to have violated the contract and the suspension was completely overturned and the grievant was made whole.
APSO President Tracy LeSieur said: “It was unfortunate that APSO was not able to settle this matter at a lower level. Moving forward to arbitration, we were very thankful for the support that we received from NSO Vice President of Defense, Justin Zartman. We were thrilled with the arbitrator’s decision upholding just cause. It shows how important it is to have strong contract language.”
Congratulations and a great job NSO!