Source: http://lwm-info.org/205/February-2015---Municipal-Grievance-Poli
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 17:57:16+00:00

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Steve Zach is a partner in Boardman & Clark LLP which provides a wide range of legal services, including serving as general counsel to local governments and providing specialized services to municipally owned electric, water and wastewater utilities. He can be contacted at szach@boardmanclark.com.
The statute provides little guidance as to what should be included in the grievance policy and there is scant legislative history to aid in its interpretation. For example, the statute does not define “employee,” “termination,” “discipline,” or “workplace safety.” Given this lack of clarity as to the scope of employment actions subject to sec. 66.0509(1m), municipalities have adopted policies which limit the application of the grievance process by excluding through definition certain employment actions from its coverage.
What are Discipline & Termination?
This is particularly true with respect to the definition of “discipline” and “termination.” Most sec. 66.0509(1m) policies exclude from their coverage employment actions caused by economic factors, including layoffs, furloughs, reductions-in-force, and wage and benefit adjustments. They also exclude “non-disciplinary” employment actions such as resignations, retirements, voluntary quits, and administrative leaves with pay. Some policies go further and exclude verbal and written warnings on the basis they are remedial rather than disciplinary in nature.
In Schneider v. Howard Suamico School District, Case No. 2013-CV-397 (Brown County Circuit Court), the school district adopted a grievance procedure which excluded teacher non-renewals under sec. 118.22, Stats., from the definition of “termination” and “discipline.” A non-renewed teacher argued that this exclusion violated sec. 66.0509(1m). The circuit court also interpreted the statute by reference to the dictionary definition of “discipline” and concluded that “discipline” encompasses “punishment.” The court concluded that because some non-renewals may constitute “punishment,” non-renewals could not categorically be excluded from the grievance procedure. The court did not consider whether non-renewals are also “terminations.” The circuit court opinion suggests that an Act 10 grievance procedure may exclude from its scope non-renewals based upon non-disciplinary reasons. The decision suggests that other non-disciplinary actions may also be excluded from a statutory grievance policy.
Another question that has been the subject of legal proceedings is whether a §66.0509(1m) grievance procedure creates a property interest in municipal employment. A municipal employee who has a property interest in employment is almost always entitled to a pre-termination hearing, although individual circumstances will affect how elaborate such a hearing must be. Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 105 S.Ct. 1487 (1985).
As a general rule, municipal employment is at-will. Vorwald v. School District of River Falls, 167 Wis. 2d 549, 482 N.W.2d 93 (1992). A protected property interest generally only arises if an employee has an expectation of continued employment arising from a policy, statute, handbook, collective bargaining agreement or individual contract that provides job security (such as a “cause” standard) akin to tenure. Sanguigni v. Pittsburgh Bd. of Public Educ., 968 F.2d 393 (3d Cir. 1992).
Whether a sec. 66.0509(1m) policy creates a property right and requires that a municipal employee receive procedural due process was addressed in Nesvold v. Roland, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105268 (W.D. Wis. Aug. 1, 2014). The county employee filed a federal lawsuit alleging that his separation from county employment violated his due process rights. To prevail, the employee had to prove that the terms of his employment provided for termination only for “cause” or otherwise evinced mutually explicit understandings of continued employment. The county adopted a sec. 66.0509(1m) policy which articulated that the impartial hearing officer could only overturn the county’s employment action upon a finding that such action was “arbitrary and capricious.” This standard has been the primary standard adopted by municipalities, although some have adopted a higher “cause” standard.
The court held that the adoption of a grievance process pursuant to sec. 66.0509(1m) does not create a federally-protected property right. Significantly, the court also concluded that the adoption of an “arbitrary and capricious” standard does not create a property right, holding that while such a standard moves the employment setting out of an “at-will” status, it does not establish a “cause” standard sufficient to create a property right to the position. The court further recognized that the statutory grievance process in-and-of-itself satisfies federal due process rights, even if that process does not provide all the relief that an employee seeks, such as front pay or future loss of earnings.
These cases suggest that the adoption of a sec. 66.0509(1m) grievance process which includes a standard of review short of “cause” does not give rise to a property right which would impose due process obligations on a municipality.
The Act 10 grievance provisions were not part of initial legislation and were presumably added in recognition of the fact that Act 10 made “just cause” and grievance arbitration provisions prohibited subjects of bargaining. This suggests that at least part of the legislative intent in adopting sec. 66.0509(1m) was to provide municipal employees with some procedural employment protections if they were not already covered by a civil service process.
Police officers and firefighters can only be terminated, suspended or reduced-in-rank in conformance with the process and cause standards set forth in sec. 62.13(5)(em), Stats.
Police officers and firefighters are able to bargain for a grievance arbitration process for discipline and termination.
Municipal officers who are appointed to their positions are subject to removal pursuant to various statutory provisions and processes.
“Workplace safety” is not defined in the statute, but typically has been defined by policy to include conditions that substantially endanger an employee’s health or safety. These conditions can be subject to state and federal standards and enforcement mechanisms (e.g., OSHA).
There are a variety of state and federal discrimination statutes which provide municipal employees with protection from discriminatory employment actions and the administrative and legal venues to enforce those protections.
The statute and its legislative history do not provide an answer to this question, but some municipalities have taken an aggressive approach and excluded from their sec. 66.0509(1m) process those employment actions or safety conditions which provide an employee a procedural review process by means of other statutory sources.
The Wisconsin legislature gave municipalities significant discretion in the drafting of grievance policies under sec. 66.0509(1m). Recent case law interpreting that statute has confirmed that discipline and terminations which occur under such policies do not create due process rights, unless the policies adopt a substantive cause standard. They also suggest that any attempt to limit the application of the grievance procedure by means of definitional exclusions must comport with common sense definitional standards. To the extent that a municipality can define an employment action as “non-disciplinary” and support that argument, the courts have shown an inclination to permit the municipality to exclude that action from the grievance process. Given the dearth of statutory guidance, however, many questions remain as to the ability of municipalities to shape the application of the grievance process.

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