Opinion ID: 6930060
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Under The Collective Bargaining Agreement

Text: We must ascertain first whether Directive No. 2212, which made employee-reservists perform their military duties on their regular days off, violated the collective bargaining agreement. The district court found plaintiffs’ right to assigned pass days, secured through an exercise of seniority, was a right protected by the labor agreemént. We review this finding under the clearly erroneous standard, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a), and that finding need only be plausible when examining the record as a whole. See Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573-74, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1511-12, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). Under Article 24 of the labor agreement the Department reserved to itself the right to make any job or shift assignment necessary to maintain the services of the Department. It is required to post for 30 days all permanent vacancies before making a permanent assignment. As related, employees select their work assignments by bidding on work packages that contain the particular shift to be worked, its location and the pass day or days off schedule. Because pass days are advertised to employees as a combined package along with shift and work location, the successful bidder is awarded the entire work package. Paragraph 24.2 further provides “[sjeniority shall be the basis by which employees shall select pass days.” Seniority is defined in ¶ 24.1 of the labor agreement. as “the length of an employee’s uninterrupted service in title in a department or agency including sick leave, military leaves not to exceed four years and other leaves of absence which do not exceed one year and Worker’s Compensation leave.” The district court ruled that once an employee is assigned a work package the pass days are set and regularly scheduled for as long as the employee remains a member of that particular work-shift. The trial court also found that ¶ 15.-3(e) — which provides that “[rjegularly scheduled days off shall not be changed for the purpose of avoiding the payment of overtime” — protects employees from having their assigned pass days changed. The Department contends this provision merely restrains it as employer from making ad hoc changes to an individual employee’s pass days, but that it does not bar the Department from limiting overtime by making general policy decisions. The Department’s argument has a plausible ring to it, but the plain language of ¶ 15.3(e) is to the contrary. It prohibits the Department from changing pass days cast in the guise of a departmental policy, which in practice allow the Department to avoid the payment of overtime, whether the pass day change occurred once and only affected one employee or whether it occurred, as here, thousands of times and affected many employees. Nonetheless, the Department maintains, a November 1976 settlement agreement reached in a suit by campus police officers at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Plattsburg regarding the rescheduling of days off changed the application of ¶ 15.3(e) for correction officers. The State of New York Office of Employee Relations and Council 82 entered into the so-called Boas settlement agreement, which interpreted ¶ 15.3(e) (then Article 16.3(e) of a predecessor labor agreement) as follows: “[ejxcept in the case of an emergency or due to unforeseen circumstances, any employee whose posted regularly scheduled day off is changed shall be paid at the overtime rate that day.” The SUNY campus police officers are covered by the same collective bargaining agreement as the correction officers, but they are on a work schedule where management posts job assignments 28 days before the work schedule goes into effect. Employees have to refer to the posted schedule to determine what shifts and rest days management has assigned. The Department insists the Boas settlement applies to the correction officers and, after an employee’s pass days are posted, they may be changed provided the employee is paid overtime for the changed pass day. The Boas settlement attempted to reconcile the charge that the Department was making changes in days off to avoid paying overtime. Nevertheless, no evidence at trial showed that the pass days of the correction officers before us were posted within the meaning of the Boas settlement. Nor is there any language in the settlement making it applicable beyond the SUNY system. Joseph Bress who signed the settlement on behalf of the State of New York testified at. trial that he and Carl Gray, former Executive Director for Council 82, agreed that it applied to the Council 82 contract generally. He further testified that the Office of Employee Relations had applied the settlement agreement subsequent to its signing and that it was still being applied as a matter of practice between the parties. Based on his testimony, the Department urges that the Boas settlement be enforced against the present plaintiffs. Mr. Gray, who signed the Boas settlement on behalf of Council 82, averred that when it was signed it was intended to apply solely to SUNY security officers. Richard Bisehert, District Director for Council 82, also stated the application of the Boas settlement was limited to university police. Although the district court did not address the Boas settlement explicitly, it took considerable testimony on this subject and obviously considered whether the settlement agreement was applicable when it discussed the Department’s negotiation strategy regarding the attempted elimination of ¶ 15.3(e) from the labor agreement. In addition, the record reveals that the trial court was fully' aware of the details and complexities of the Boas settlement. Hence, in failing to make a finding that the Boas settlement applied to the correction officers, it impliedly found it did not. Refusing to give effect to the Boas settlement was a determination the district court made based on the credibility of witnesses who gave conflicting testimony and may not be said to be clearly erroneous in light of the record evidence, even though a contrary view would not be unreasonable. See Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574, 105 S.Ct. at 1512. On March 30,1982 after a year-long investigation into the earlier recited military leave abuses, the Department issued Directive No. 2212 setting forth procedures for requesting, approving and verifying the use of paid military leave by Department employees. Employees were directed to provide their watch commander with a copy of each quarterly military training schedule. The directive advised employees that “[t]he Deployment Lieutenant/Attendance Control Office will review the quarterly training schedules and extra ordered military duty’so that, when practicable and consistent with the Department’s personnel requirements, regular days off and shift assignments may be revised to avoid military drills during scheduled working hours.” Employees were also informed that “[t]he entire thirty (30) days paid military leave allowance must be used before military leave without pay, or the use of accrued vacation, personal leave or holiday leaves may be granted.” According to the Department, Directive No. 2212 was designed to mitigate military leave abuses, reduce global overtime and other costs caused by absenteeism through this abuse, minimize use of vacation and personal leave for military duty and maintain the fullest possible complement of employees at correctional facilities throughout the state. Pri- or to its adoption, the Department did not change the pass days of any of the affected employees to coincide with their military duty days. Instead, if military duty fell on an employee’s scheduled work day he or she was granted military leave and still retained his or her assigned pass days. By using the authorization contained in Directive No. 2212, the Department was able to reschedule 15,950 pass days. We agree with the district court’s findings that the Department had twin purposes in rescheduling pass days: to provide the increased manpower needed to fulfill the duties mandated by law and to reduce overtime compensation. We also agree with the trial court’s conclusion that the Department violated article 24 of the collective bargaining agreement when it rescheduled appellees’ pass days. It is evident that application of the Directive altered the seniority provisions of ¶¶24.1 and 24.2 of the labor agreement since employees could not select pass days independently of the seniority-based selection of the entire job package. Further, the Directive authorized the Department to change pass days to avoid paying overtime contrary to the provisions of ¶ 15.3(e) of the labor agreement. Because the language of ¶ 15.3(e) does not require that avoiding the payment of overtime be the sole reason for changing pass days, the finding that the Directive violated that provision of the labor contract is not clearly erroneous.