Court Opinion

ID: 9819001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:17:56.177221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:28.909638
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HARRISON, also dissenting: My colleagues have persuaded themselves that they have struck "the proper balance between the public’s interest in protecting its children, the utilization of arbitration as a means for settling labor disputes, and the proper role of the judiciary in the arbitral process.” In fact, their decision does nothing to aid children, ignores the basic protections guaranteed to state employees by the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act (5 ILCS 315/1 et seq. (West 1992)), and converts the courts into agents for subverting industrial due process. To cynics familiar with this court’s recent decisions in Barnett v. Zion Park District, 171 Ill. 2d 378 (1996), and Mt. Zion State Bank & Trust v. Consolidated Communications, Inc., 169 Ill. 2d 110 (1995), the majority’s professed concern for the welfare of children may seem more than a little disingenuous. In both of those cases, the court had an opportunity to provide meaningful redress where children were actually injured or killed due to the negligence of others. Instead, when compassion would have made a real difference, it was nowhere to be found. The court refused to help. Here, by contrast, the court’s compassion appears boundless, but it has waited to debut until a time when it is of no immediate benefit to anyone but a governmental bureaucracy that is unhappy with the obligations imposed by the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act and by the terms of the collective-bargaining agreement it negotiated with its employees’ union. I have certainly not forgotten, I could not forget, that dead children figure into this case. But their deaths are wholly unrelated to anything Vera DuBose may have done wrong in her capacity as a DCFS child welfare specialist. The charges against her have never been addressed on the merits, but even if DuBose did falsify a case report and even if she did fail to prepare all of the service plans she should have, those transgressions were wholly unrelated to what happened to the children. The children perished because their house burned down, not because their case worker failed, to do her job properly. The situation here is analogous to the one we considered in American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees v. State of Illinois, 124 Ill. 2d 246 (1988), where a patient at a mental health facility died while two employees of the facility were away from their work site without permission. The Department of Mental Health discharged the employees, but the arbitrator reduced the discipline to suspensions and reinstatement without back pay or other benefits. The circuit court subsequently vacated the arbitration award on th¿ grounds that "it represented a severe, and extreme departure- from the public policy of Illinois, which is to protect not to endanger mental patients.”. American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, 124 Ill. 2d at 252. The appellate court reversed,. and this court affirmed the appellate court’s judgment; remanding the cause with directions to -order enforcement of the arbitrator’s award. In so doing, this court specifically rejected the circuit court’s reasoning and held that public policy did not mandate discharge where, as here, there was no nexus between the employees’' infraction and the patient’s death. While the misconduct Dubose allegedly committed may be reprehensible, it is certainly no worse than the conduct of the mental health workers this court allowed to be reinstated in American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. More importantly, reinstatement of DuBose poses no more threat of harm or danger to third persons than did reinstatement of the mental health workers in that case. To the contrary, reinstatement of DuBose presents a far lower risk, for her job is simply to monitor and make reports about the care provided by others. In contrast to the employees disciplined in American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, she has no direct responsibility for client care herself. If reinstatement did not offend public policy in American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, it surely does not do so in this case either. The only thing that distinguishes the cases is that the person who died in American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees was a profoundly mentally retarded patient tied to a toilet by state workers and not a child, as was the case here. That distinction, however, should be of no consequence to my colleagues. They may believe that the life of a helpless state mental patient is somehow less worthy of our concern and protection than the life of a child, but they are duty bound to place such prejudices behind them when acting as justices of this court. Here they are obliged to follow the law, and under the law of Illinois, all people are equal. In making these remarks, I do not mean to suggest that sloth or dishonesty by public employees is ever acceptable. The people of this state are entitled to expect public workers to be conscientious and diligent, and when workers do not fulfill their obligations, the State must have the power to terminate or discipline them. The State had that power here. The problem is that the power was not exercised properly. If DCFS really believed that continued employment of Vera DuBose posed the terrible threat depicted by my colleagues, it could have taken remedial action promptly, as the collective-bargaining agreement and the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act required. It failed to do so. Instead, it inexplicably allowed seven months to pass before it initiated predisciplinary measures. Where, I wonder, was the agency’s concern for Vera Du-Bose’s clients during all that time? Considering the lengthy delay before DCFS finally took action, it seems apparent that the agency was not, in fact, worried that her work might actually endanger any children. Instead, the notion of protecting minors appears to be nothing more than an expedient the agency has employed to circumvent its statutory and contractual obligations to its employees. Contrary to my colleagues, I do not believe we should aid DCFS in this effort. Whatever DuBose allegedly did or failed to do, she did not break the law. Her only offense, if she committed one, was failure to perform the requirements of her job. This is not an insignificant matter, especially where the protection and welfare of minors may be involved, but it is no reason to negate the provisions of the collective-bargaining agreement. Most public employees provide important services that affect public health and safety one way or another, and by the logic employed by my colleagues, public policy would be violated and the terms of the collective-bargaining agreements could be ignored anytime such an employee failed to perform his job properly. If that were the case, the protection afforded public employees by collective-bargaining agreements would be rendered meaningless. In his dissent from the appellate court’s opinion, Justice Steigmann acknowledged that the circuit court’s ruling could not be affirmed without disregarding the express terms of the collective-bargaining agreement, but he dismissed this problem with a cavalier "So what?” I winced when I read this, and I think anyone who understands organized labor and the law of Illinois will have the same response. Collective-bargaining agreements are the cornerstone of our labor policy. Without them, the benefits of union representation would be impossible. Organized labor would collapse. Justice Steigmann and the majority on this court may believe that life without unions would be a good thing, but they are wrong. Unions help improve working conditions, wages, and job security, and provide employees with a voice in workplace matters that they would otherwise lack. At the same time, they tend to increase the employer’s productivity by reducing employee turnover and fostering more rational management policies. While critics of the labor movement may take issue with some of these claims, the matter is not for us to judge. Any debate as to the advantages of allowing public employees to organize and bargain collectively was settled by the General Assembly when it enacted the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act. That statute specifically declares that it is the public policy of this state to grant public employees the right to organize for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. 5 ILCS 315/2 (West 1994). To effectuate this policy, the statute provides that public employees have the right and public employers have the duty to bargain collectively (5 ILCS 315/6, 315/7 (West 1994)) and that, with certain exceptions not relevant here, "any collective bargaining contract *** executed pursuant to th[e] Act shall supersede any contrary statutes, charters, ordinances, rules or regulations relating to wages, hours and conditions of employment and employment relations adopted by the public employer or its agents” (5 ILCS 315/15(b) (West 1994)). In holding that the collective-bargaining agreement at issue here must yield to "public policy,” the majority fails to see that the foregoing statutory provisions evince a second and separate "public policy” requiring that the collective-bargaining agreement be enforced as written. Considering the critical importance of collective bargaining, on the one hand, and the absence of any demonstrable harm or threat of harm to any actual children, on the other, it is this second "public policy” which should take precedence under the particular facts of this case. The majority’s decision today enables DCFS to take Vera DuBose’s job away from her without ever having to substantiate its allegations and without even having to follow the procedural requirements specified by the collective-bargaining agreement. To claim that this somehow satisfies industrial due process reduces the concept to a sham. When all is said and done, this opinion amounts to nothing more than an attempt to exploit the specter of helpless children as a means to rationalize judicial union busting. This effort is totally misguided. If my. colleagues are truly concerned with protecting young children, they should stand in defense of collective bargaining and uphold the requirements of the Illinois Public. Labor Relations Act so that DCFS workers can obtain the resources they need to keep up with their crushing caseloads and perform their jobs properly. For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the appellate court upholding the arbitrator’s award in favor of DuBose. I therefore dissent.