Opinion ID: 625138
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the reorganization

Text: For the uninitiated, the PBA is a commonwealth-created public corporation whose central mission is preparing plans for and meeting the maintenance needs of physical facilities related to government services, and whose seven-member governing board includes four persons appointed by Puerto Rico's Governor. See P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 22, §§ 902-04, 906. The board approved the reorganization that has caused this dust-upa reorganization that eliminated some PBA positions and created new ones too. Out went Field-Operations-Supervisor positions, for example, and in came Field-Operations-Manager and Technical-Services-Supervisor posts. Soto-Padró is a member of the New Progressive Party (NPP), one of Puerto Rico's two main political parties. The other is the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). At some point in the restructuring process, he went from being a Field Operations Supervisor to a Technical Services Supervisor. According to the summary-judgment evidence, here is how that happened. After the PBA cut the Field Operations Supervisor positions as part of the reorganization, Soto-Padró applied for three PBA jobs: Auxiliary Regional Director, Field Operations Manager, and Technical Services Supervisor. A trio of PBA officials Conservation Area Director Fabio Barreto Martínez, Special Assistant to the Executive Director Miguel Dávila-Sánchez, and Executive Sub-Director José Girona-Márquezinterviewed him for the latter two positions. Human Resources and Labor Relations Manager Rudy Martínez-Calderón also sat in on the interviews. Everyone except Soto-Padró was a PDP sympathizer. The Field-Operations-Manager job went to Adrián Acevedo-Rivera, a PDP sympathizer and former Field Operations Supervisor. Another PDP sympathizer, PBA Executive Director Leila Hernández-Umpierre, wrote Soto-Padró that he had landed the Technical-Services-Supervisor position instead. But despite being offered a job that he had applied for, Soto-Padró soon had a change of heart. He realized that the switch from Field Operations Supervisor to Technical Services Supervisor would lower the range of possible pay-raise options, though it would not affect his immediate salary. And he learned from talking with PBA Regional Director Javier Soto-Cardona, a PDP activist, that he would have new duties: supervising lower-ranked personnel than he had before and handling plumbing and refrigeration issues, not electrical matters like he was used to (Soto-Padró has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering), though he concedes that plumbing and refrigeration are critical aspects of PBA operations. So Soto-Padró balked at the switch, writing Hernández-Umpierre that he considered it a demotion since it would lower his pay scale and lessen his functions. Martínez-Calderón responded, telling Soto-Padró that he would continue as Field Operations Supervisor. But eight months later, Hernández-Umpierre fired off another letter to Soto-Padró, this time saying that he had been doing the duties of a Technical Services Supervisor for the past few months or so anyway and that the PBA was reclassifying his position to Technical Services Supervisor. Soto-Padró was hardly the only PBA staffer affected by the reshuffling. And though executed by PBA personnel affiliated with the PDP, the reorganization impacted workers in both political camps, as we shall see shortly.