Three Local 237 maintenance workers were vindicated Jan. 23, after the Board of Collective Bargaining granted the union’s improper practice petition, finding that the Department of Parks and Recreation committed improper practices by transferring Ralph Biscotti and Angelo Gerbasio and assigning them menial work, and threatening to transfer Mitch Rippe because the workers had prevailed in an arbitration.

Parks Department managers transferred Biscotti and Gerbasio in June 2004, and threatened to transfer Rippe because they refused to drive Parks vehicles on the grounds that their jobs did not require them to drive. The three had won a grievance May 18, 2004, in which an arbitrator ruled that “driving was a duty substantially different from those duties stated in the maintenance worker job specification,” and ordered the Parks Department to “cease and desist requiring Grievants to drive Parks vehicles.”

Biscotti, a Parks maintenance worker for 21 years, and Gerbasio, who has 19 years with the department, were assigned to Far Rockaway to “walk on the boardwalk and bang down the nails which had popped up.”

After contacting their business agent, Randy Klein, the union immediately filed an improper practice petition against the Parks Department for violating the arbitrator’s out-of-title grievance award.

Attorney Barry J. Peek, of the law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, P.C., who represented Local 237, called the transfer of Biscotti and Gerbasio to Far Rockaway “retaliation,” which, he added, “had a chilling effect on union activity.” The Office of Collective Bargaining agreed and ordered the Parks Department to return the two maintenance workers to their original location.

In its decision, the OCB board ordered the Parks Department to “cease and desist from retaliating against Ralph Biscotti, Angelo Gerbasio and Mitch Rippe;” to “cease and desist threatening adverse employment actions against Mitch Rippe;” to “rescind the transfers of Ralph Biscotti and Angelo Gerbasio and return them to Forest Park Shops in Queens;” and ordered the Department to make assignments to the men “without consideration of their union activity and in the same manner that it makes assignments to other similarly-situated employees who have refused to drive.” The board also ordered the Department to post a notice regarding the decision and order “for no less than thirty days at all locations used by Parks for written communications with bargaining unit employees.”

“I applaud the decision and the fact that OCB is demanding that they post notice of the award on bulletin boards throughout the workplace so that members cannot be intimidated by their supervisors to perform work that has been ruled as out of title,” said Local 237 President Carl Haynes. “These members obviously read their contract and took action to fight back, knowing they had the full support of their union behind them.”