Opinion ID: 202046
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Career Employees

Text: 5 Román was elected mayor of the Municipality of San Lorenzo on November 7, 2000, and took office on January 9, 2001. He defeated incumbent NPP Mayor Víctor Figueroa Orozco. He then appointed Norat, previously a Public Works employee in another city, to head San Lorenzo's Department of Public Works. The Department had several divisions, including sanitation, which was responsible for garbage collection and other cleaning tasks. 6 Soon after taking office, Mayor Román and other municipal officials, including Norat, began planning the possible privatization of the sanitation division. The officials testified that they did so because of lackluster garbage collection, and that they conducted a cost-benefit analysis and determined that privatization would save San Lorenzo hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. However, two PDP-affiliated witnesses — plaintiff Samuel Borges Colón (Borges), a former sanitation supervisor, and Sandra González Díaz (González), defendant Iraida Hornedo's predecessor as municipal human resources director — testified that Mayor Román had said in their presence that the privatization plan was a device to force NPP workers out of government employment. Further, González testified that in privatizing the sanitation division, the Municipality did not follow its 1997 Layoff Plan, which required that transitory workers be fired first in the event of layoffs. She testified that Mayor Román and other fellow officers . . . [and] ranking employees had said that with this privatization process, they were going to be able to get rid of employees that were not belonging to the political party of the people in power. She also testified, based on her experience as municipal human resources director, that the criteria used to appoint personnel in San Lorenzo after Mayor Román took office were as follows: [t]o be affiliated with the PDP, to be acquaintances of the mayor or relatives of the mayor, to be friends with some high-ranking functionary. 7 Borges testified that soon after the mayoral election he met with Mayor Román, who told him that he needed me there at public works, to help him, because the first thing he wanted to do was to take the NPP's out of the municipality. Asked about Mayor Román's attitude toward public works employees, Borges testified as follows: 8 A: Well, his attitude was that, since they were NPP's, he didn't want them there. 9 Q: And how did you know that? 10 A: Because they would tell me, the engineer would tell me, [1] Mr. Martin Davila would tell me, that they wanted to get rid of the NPP employees in order to place Popular Democratic Party followers. 11 Q: When, if at any time, did the mayor tell you that those were his intentions after he became mayor of San Lorenzo, you know? 12 A: On numerous occasions at Public Works, when we would meet with Mr. Norat. 13 Q: Do you recall what were his words? 14 A: That he had to get rid of the NPP employees because he had to place his people. 15 In the summer of 2001, Norat took the privatization proposal and the favorable cost-benefit analysis to the Municipal Assembly for approval. On August 30, 2001, the Assembly approved Municipal Ordinance No. 7 (the ordinance), authorizing Mayor Román to negotiate the privatization of the sanitation division. Mayor Román signed the ordinance the next day. 16 In the ordinance, the Municipal Assembly set conditions on the privatization process. It stated that the company with which the Municipality contracted for privatization had to agree, when hiring, to consider all of the municipal employees who qualify within their standards of selection of employees pursuant to its Human Resources regulations. It also added a second requirement: The remaining employees belonging to the sanitation area will be retained in their positions or will be relocated to other dependencies of the municipality pursuant to the needs of the service. . . . 17 The Municipality of San Lorenzo agrees to protect and guarantee the vested rights of the regular employees who are working in the Department of Sanitation. 18 The city began soliciting privatization proposals. Five companies submitted proposals; the municipal bids board selected a firm called ARB and arranged for ARB to take over the Municipality's sanitation service. 19 On January 23, 2002, Mayor Román wrote a letter to thirty-six sanitation employees (the career plaintiffs), informing them that their jobs were terminated effective February 25. Though the events leading up to privatization had taken months, this was the career plaintiffs' first official notice of potential privatization or its possible effect on their jobs. Of the thirty-six career plaintiffs, thirty-five were affiliated with the NPP, 2 while the last, Borges, was a PDP member who had had a falling-out with Mayor Román over Borges' sympathy for NPP co-workers. Most of the career plaintiffs testified that Mayor Román knew their political affiliation, either because they were neighbors or because Mayor Román had seen them participating in NPP electioneering activities. 20 The January 23 letter, signed by Mayor Román, stated: 21 As a result of the privatization . . . the sanitation program of the Municipal Department of Public Works is eliminated, which entails the lay-off and elimination of all the positions assigned to said program. 22 Pursuant to the above, you are laid off from your position effective February 25, 2002. You have 30 days as of the date of this communication to appeal this decision before the Board of Appeals of the Personnel System of the Government. 23 The letter also stated, however, that the ordinance and the contract between San Lorenzo and ARB provide[] for the recruitment and job security of the personnel affected by this negotiation. It added that [t]he Municipality will coordinate this process and will notify the day and time of the job interviews. 24 All of the affected workers were career employees. Under Puerto Rico law, as career employees, they had vested property rights in their jobs and, in general terms, could only be removed for cause and were entitled to procedural due process protections. 3 In this case, the 1997 Layoff Plan, which required that transitory workers be fired before such career workers in the event layoffs were necessary, was not followed. 4 25 The January 23 letter was delivered to most of the career plaintiffs at a meeting on January 25, 2002, at the Priscilla Flores Theater. San Lorenzo's new director of human resources, Hornedo, 5 spoke to the workers, telling them that the Municipality had set up a process to help them get jobs with ARB. Hornedo also told the career plaintiffs that if any of them had questions or concerns, they could come to her office to talk with her and review their personnel files. The career plaintiffs were given ARB applications during this meeting, and some filled them out and submitted them on the spot. Unemployment officials attended the meeting, bringing along unemployment benefits forms for them to fill out. 6 26 During the months that followed, a few of the career plaintiffs obtained jobs with ARB. 7 Most, however, found themselves without jobs either at ARB or within the Municipality. Some testified that they approached Hornedo and asked her to find them other jobs in the Municipality; she told them no jobs were available. One career plaintiff, Raul Galarza Santana, said Hornedo told him she had spoken to Mayor Román, and the Mayor had said there was no chance for me being rehired. Another career plaintiff, Ivan Rosa-Rivera, said Hornedo told him: I am deeply sorry. This decision has already been taken. These are orders coming from above, and you are dismissed from your work. Mayor Román was in charge of all personnel decisions in the Municipality. 27 Many of the career plaintiffs also testified that they filled out applications with ARB but were never offered jobs or contacted for interviews. Others testified that they were offered jobs at ARB, but under conditions that made the jobs difficult or impossible to accept. The offered jobs were in Cataño and other towns some distance from San Lorenzo. Some had no way to get there for work; others said ARB offered to pick them up in San Lorenzo and drive them back and forth, but that that would mean getting up at 2 or 3 a.m. and returning home at 11 p.m. — a twenty-hour day. One of the career plaintiffs, David de Jesus-Santa, testified that he took the Cataño job, managed to get ARB to transfer him to San Lorenzo for two months, but was then told he would be assigned to Cataño again; he quit because he had no way to get there. Another, Rafael Martinez-Santana, testified that when he approached Juan Reyes Burgos, the president of ARB, to ask for work, Burgos told him that he would give me work, but not in San Lorenzo; that the mayor [Román] had told him to give me work, but not in San Lorenzo. He did not want me in San Lorenzo. 28 Other evidence also established a political motivation for the elimination of the career plaintiffs' positions. Borges testified that at least four of the five former sanitation workers who kept their jobs with the Municipality after the privatization were PDP-affiliated. 8 Well over one hundred of the transitory municipal workers hired by the Román administration were PDP-affiliated. One witness testified he could not identify any NPP hires among a list of all the new transitory employees. Various career plaintiffs testified that the Municipality made no attempt to offer them these transitory jobs, even when they were qualified for the positions. 29 Further, some of the plaintiffs testified that, while their job descriptions were technically eliminated, PDP loyalists were hired and took over their job duties under different titles. For example, career plaintiff Benito Claudio-Figueroa testified that he was a heavy vehicle and equipment supervisor, and that a man whom he knew to be a PDP member was performing his old job for the Municipality, under the new title Deputy Director of Public Works. Finally, a number of career plaintiffs testified that they had been employed elsewhere in the Department of Public Works prior to the Román administration, but had been asked by Norat to switch to sanitation in 2001, after Mayor Román's election. These plaintiffs all testified that they were not offered their old positions back, and most testified that those positions were filled by workers they knew to be PDP loyalists. 30 The only non-NPP member among the thirty-six terminated career plaintiffs, Borges, testified that despite his PDP affiliation, he opposed political firings and said as much to Norat, the head of the Department of Public Works. Borges testified that on August 17, 2001, Norat told Borges that the Mayor was unhappy with Borges because Borges supposedly had met with a group of NPP employees who were suing the Municipality in a separate action. Borges was placed on twenty days' compensatory leave. He was placed on another leave later in the year, and in December, he testified, he returned from an illness to find that his supervisory duties had been reassigned to a PDP loyalist. 31 Borges was among the employees terminated via the January 23, 2002 letter. After the meeting at the Flores Theater, he approached ARB official Burgos and told him he was available to work for ARB. He testified that Burgos told him that he was sorry, that he could not give me work about the municipality of San Lorenzo because the Honorable Mayor had told him that . . . he could not offer work to any of the people who had been dismissed; that he could give me work, but in the municipality of Cataño. When Burgos told him the arrangement — that he would be picked up at 3 a.m., driven to Cataño, and then driven back to San Lorenzo at night — Borges told [Burgos] that schedule would be impossible for me because that would mean being away from my home almost all day and night. Borges also approached Hornedo and asked her to reevaluate his case. He testified that Hornedo told him that she had orders from the mayor that there was no more work for me.