Date: Fri 19-Jun-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Powell-arbitration-racists

Full Text:

Racist Abuse Puts Arbitration Board On The Spot

By Chris Powell

Are there any firing offenses in public employment in Connecticut?

That is the question posed by the latest incident of racist abuse in the

Correction Department.

Recently the department fired two white lieutenants at MacDougall Correctional

Institution in Suffield who were found to have threatened to lynch a

handcuffed black prisoner. The prisoner had been brought to an office where a

noose had been suspended from the ceiling.

But the lieutenants are appealing to the state Board of Mediation and

Arbitration, a secretive and unaccountable agency whose policy seems to be to

disgrace and discredit the very concept of government.

A few months ago the arbitration board ordered the reinstatement of another

racist Correction Department employee, a white guard who had been fired for

leaving a threatening and racist telephone answering machine message for a

black state senator who had opposed contract terms sought by the guards union.

This racist guard made that call while on duty and used the "N word." But the

arbitration board determined that dismissal was too severe a penalty and that

the guard should have been merely suspended instead.

Fortunately Correction Commissioner John J. Armstrong persists in demanding

high standards of his department's employees. While the racist guard may be

returned to the payroll, the commissioner has refused to take him back at

work. The commissioner promises to resist the reinstatement of the racist

lieutenants as well.

In a recent interview Armstrong noted that Correction Department officers wear

the uniform of the state, and he argued that in doing so they must be role

models for the prisoners they supervise. He also noted that a disproportionate

number of those prisoners are members of racial minorities, and he described

just how incendiary official racism can be in an environment that, by its

nature, already is dangerously tense.

Armstrong said he is always ready to support his staff when honest mistakes

are made, but the racist incidents were anything but that. They were matters

of malice on the job, and, the commissioner said, failing to impose the most

severe discipline in such circumstances could expose not only the perpetrators

but all Correction Department employees to even more danger than they

inevitably face.

The Correction Department hasn't been alone lately in suffering the disgrace

of the arbitration board. Last month the board arranged the reinstatement of a

supervisor for the state Department of Children and Families who had been

caught carrying marijuana into a courthouse while on state business. Though

the department fired her, once again an arbiter decided that dismissal was too

severe a penalty. So suspension and demotion to a position where the employee

no longer works with the public were arranged.

In transferring the employee the department did what it could to acknowledge

that, like Correction Department employees, DCF employees have to set an

example for people who, as with the Correction Department's wards, would not

be dealing with the department in the first place if they themselves knew how

to behave. But even with its drugs-on-the-job employee hidden from the public,

the department's moral authority with its clients will be damaged.

The appeal of the Correction Department's fired lieutenants is bound to call

more attention to the arbitration board's destruction of discipline in public

employment and its pernicious effect on public policy generally. But those who

are most responsible for the board are the governor and General Assembly, who

appoint its members and give it authority to undermine the government as it

does. If, as seems likely, the board reinstates the aspiring lynchers in the

Correction Department as it reinstated the guard who spent work time

threatening and abusing a state senator and the DCF supervisor who took

marijuana to court, even the governor and the General Assembly might be shamed

into doing something about the board.

That would entail repealing what has been the first principle of public

administration in Connecticut ever since automatic unionization of the

government work force and binding arbitration for public employee unions were

enacted in the state 25 years ago -- the principle that the interest of public

employees and their unions must trump every other concern in government, no

matter how much the government is disgraced as a result.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)