Lockport — Once again, reporting by the Lockport US&J (April 23—City seeks to bar CSEA) and an overt attempt by City of Lockport administrators to consciously misinform the public about personnel matters and day-to-day governance continues to be a major source of consternation for right-minded citizens in our community who only seek transparency, honesty and truth. Simply put, the trust between city hall and its employees, the local media and our community has been broken.
CSEA takes exception to statements made from city administrators as well as a newspaper that basically got it wrong. Contrary to their reporting, CSEA did respond to the newspaper in an email about a request for comment. The newspaper stated, “CSEA declined to comment.” This is patently false. CSEA sent this self-explanatory statement via email on April 19 concerning a personnel matter:
“CSEA cannot and will not publicly discuss active discipline or personnel matters whatsoever—especially when outcomes are determined by arbitration, by an administrative law judge or in a court of law. Our CSEA legal team and staff are currently busy monitoring our affairs with the City of Lockport daily.”
It must also be stated the public was misinformed about one particular CSEA grievance. As stated in the Lockport US&J article, a second step grievance filed Feb. 7 on behalf of a CSEA member was “not denied” as reported. The fact is city administrators never responded back to the union in the appropriate time frame about the status of the grievance. CSEA made several attempts by employing phone calls and emails to motivate the employer to respond as they are required to do so by contract. They never did. This is the same scenario for other outstanding grievances that have been submitted to the employer in recent weeks. Therefore, CSEA had no other alternative but to file for arbitration on March 29 to compel the employer to remedy or finalize an outcome for the grievance in question.
On April 18, the City of Lockport filed four lawsuits simultaneously against CSEA, basically refusing to go through the dispute resolution procedure already agreed upon in the union contract. It appears city lawyers and officials don’t want anyone to hear or resolve contract disputes—they are asking the court to dismiss the request for arbitration altogether which violates a worker’s right for a fair hearing.
Furthermore, it appears the City of Lockport doesn’t fully appreciate the fact unionized public employees are granted due process under collective bargaining agreements or state employment law. The fact is the City of Lockport consistently circumvents and fails to follow grievance procedures stipulated in all the guiding documents that rule the workplace—including the collective bargaining agreement the city entered with CSEA many years ago.
To put this relationship in perspective, CSEA successfully monitors more than 1,200 municipal and private sector contracts statewide. For more than 108 years, almost all employers have enjoyed a great working relationship with CSEA members and their staff. The City of Lockport seems to be the exception to the rule.
As previously stated many times before, CSEA members are more than willing to negotiate in good faith and bring amicable solutions to stalled contract talks or disputed personnel matters. However, we cannot and will not do it in the court of public opinion– especially when local newspapers get the facts wrong. We will continue to do what we have always done, and that is follow the rule of law.
Additionally, it is worth repeating it is not in the best interest of our members to publicly discuss their employment status with media when pending litigation dictates outcomes. Furthermore, after reading another recent faulty published media report, CSEA represented employees were once again compelled to set the record straight one more time.
CSEA members want nothing more than to get back to focusing on the business at hand—delivering vital public services to the taxpayers of Lockport. These truths published herein are not opinion—they are fact-based actual events and self-evident.
