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Union has no duty to act after member files a grievance on his or her own behalf

Union has no duty to act after member files a grievance on his or her own behalf
George Carr and Civil Service Employees Association, Inc., Local 1000, AFSCME, AFL-CIO and County Of Westchester. ALJ Blassman, PERB U-27258

The ALJ dismissed Carr's charge, which alleged that CSEA violated §§209-a.2(a) and (c) of the Act when it refused his request that it file a contractual grievance on his behalf challenging the County's failure to promote him and when it failed to respond to his request that it represent him in a grievance he filed on his own behalf.

The ALJ found that the record did not establish that CSEA had acted arbitrarily, discriminatorily or in bad faith, but only that Carr disagreed with CSEA's opinion that the matters he complained of did not violate the collectively negotiated agreement.

The ALJ further found that CSEA had no duty under the Act to contact Carr after he filed a grievance on his own behalf, since CSEA had already explained to Carr that it would not represent him in the matters he complained of in the grievance and Carr did not specifically contact CSEA to request that it represent him or contact him regarding the grievance.

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on April 16, 2009 (boomark / email).