Marcia Chambers Photo
A majority of the town’s top supervisors and their deputies have agreed to join one of the nation’s leading unions in the aftermath of a politically divisive public fight over their salary increases by both the Board of Finance (BOF) and the Representative Town Meeting (RTM).
It took less than two months for the town’s department heads, or supervisors, and their deputies to decide to form two separate bargaining units. A total of 33 supervisors, including 12 department heads and 21 associates, will become part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME,) one of the largest labor unions in the nation. AFSCME is part of the AFL-CIO. The state has been involved in the process.
This is the last group of employees at Town Hall to seek union representation. Until now the town’s department heads and their deputies served as at-will employees, some for decades. Branford’s school supervisors, including school principals, assistant principals and others, have long been unionized.
The decision to formally form a bargaining unit came last month after decisions were finalized on which employees would be in the supervisor’s union and the deputies union. In all, there will be 21 town employees in the town bargaining unit and 12 in the supervisor’s unit for a total of 33 town employees.
Another 21 employees, including department heads, will not be in the union. They include town officials whose appointments are made by commissions or who are themselves involved in contract negotiations or who perform other duties that involve confidential communications.
First Selectman Unk DaRos said unionization was all but inevitable after the way his top department heads and their deputies had been treated during the spring budget cycle both at the BOF and an RTM committee meeting. He said his Town Hall department heads were often ridiculed.
“To publicly say some of the things that were said was disgraceful,” DaRos told the Eagle in an interview. “These people [the department heads] are not the enemy.”
“Some members of the Board of Finance,” he said, referring to Republicans, “and some members of an RTM (Administrative Services) Committee,” he said, referring to Democrats, “were treating them like they were the enemy when they were doing their jobs. They were ridiculed. It didn’t sit well with me. Why are they are singling out these particular department heads? The way they have been treated stuck in my craw.”
The dispute that led to the unionization began to unfold in public at a March BOF meeting when Republican BOF member Jennifer Aniskovich proposed an amendment to reduce DaRos’s proposed 2.9 percent salary increase for these positions to 2.0 percent. It was defeated 4 – 3 in favor of a 2.5 percent compromise offered by Victor Cassella, a Democratic BOF member. The BOF Republicans opposed the 2.5 percent increase. DaRos, an ex-officio BOF member, broke the tie vote.
Then, some weeks later, the 2.5 percent increase arrived at the RTM’s Administrative Services Committee for its consideration. The committee, a majority of whose members are Democrats, is chaired by David Baker, a Democrat. It decided not to adopt the BOF’s decision. Instead it agreed to restore the 2 percent increase the Republicans sought.
DaRos and Second Selectman Andrew Campbell were stunned. Over the next few weeks discussions were held with key Democratic RTM members. When the matter arrived at the full RTM meeting in May, RTM member Dorothy Maynard stood to amend the administrative services recommendations, asking that the RTM adopt the final BOF vote of 2.5 percent. The Democrats said “Aye,” and a majority of the Republicans voted, “Nay.” The Democrats carried the vote.
But the handwriting was on the wall. Joseph Abbatello, who works as a network analyst for the town’s information technology department, began the process or organizing the union. (He was on vacation this week and could not be reached for comment. )
At the RTM budget adoption meeting in May, DaRos said of the department heads: “These were the people that we called out in the blizzards, in the hurricane that had no, no compensation whatsoever for any overtime they do. These are the ones who come to these meetings at night with no compensation. None. These were the same people I called up and said you need to report for work and some of those people did not return home for seven days during the hurricane. There is no compensation.” He said he was also concerned that a study undertaken on salaries for top positions was not being adhered to.
The formation of bargaining units will change the day-to-day operation of Town Hall. The first selectman will no longer have the authority to simply order top workers back on the job, as he did during Hurricane Irene or during snow storms. Not one of them complained, he said. They are repeat players, he observed, called out for every emergency. And there will be other legalities and rules that will change how Town Hall operates.
“What happens now is whole different scenario on how you do business. I can’t go out and immediately call them in. Now our system will be more convoluted.”
In pushing for a 2.9 percent increase, DaRos said there was a clear disparity in salary increases for similarly situated administrators on the town side and the school side. He said the “RTM did not bat an eye when it came to raising salaries of school administrators. I believe you should treat employees the same. I am looking at this and I said we should have a 2.9 percent increase on the town side. I consider that was fair because there was no discussion on half of our employees.”
“When you take one entity over there and treat them differently than the other entity over there, there is something wrong. It is wrong as a community. When you look at the administrators at the school system, which are comparable to our department heads, you tell me it’s fair. When the lowest salaried administrator in the school system is at $112,000 and the highest administrator in the town of Branford, on the government side, is at $111,000, that is not fair.” That is the salary of Jim Finch, the town’s finance director. As it turns out, Finch will not be able to join the union.
Among those whose positions will remain at will, or outside union protection, are Finch, Joyce Forte, the human resources head, Peter Hugret, the head of information technology, Art Baker, the head of the public works department, Alex Palluzzi Jr. , the head of the recreation department, Pat Andriole, the head of the counseling center and a group of her clinicians, Dan Gregory, who manages the water pollution control facility, Trista Milici, DaRos’s top assistant and Rose Rabovsky, another assistant who often handles confidential matters. Also excluded from the union are the town’s two elected officials, Town Clerk Marianne Kelly and Town Tax Collector Joanne Cleary.
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