302 Mass. 148 | Mass. | 1939
The petitioner, an employee of the city of Holyoke within the classified civil service,.was working forty hours a week as a laborer in the department of public works at an hourly rate of pay. On April 4, 1938, he received from the board of public works a notice that in the interest of economy the board had ordered that “the working schedule for the Labor Division in this department shall not exceed Thirty (30) hours per week," and that his working hours were reduced accordingly. He requested and received a public hearing in accordance with G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 31, § 43, after which the board adhered to its order. Thereupon the petitioner obtained, under G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 31, § 45, a review by a district court, which affirmed the decision of the board. Upon a petition for a writ of certiorari to quash the action of the District Court, a single justice of this court ordered the writ to issue for that purpose, and reported the case.
The judge of the District Court finds that “the board admits that it has sufficient funds to employ the petitioner and his fellows [i.e., the senior employees of the same class] in the order of their seniority on a forty-hour per week basis, but as a matter of policy deems it fairer and more equitable to place the entire working force on a thirty-hour basis."
The order of the board was made in good faith, to solve an economic problem not unusual in these times. The money appropriated for the board was insufficient to pay as before all the laborers of the same class as the petitioner. Civil service laws leave scope for measures of economy taken with due regard to those laws. But those laws cannot be ignored in the pursuit of the commendable end of living within the municipal means. For example, wages may be reduced, but not by the indirect method of failing to appropriate sufficient money to pay civil service employees (Barnard v. Lynn, 295 Mass. 144), nor by a simple vote where the law requires an ordinance. Fortin v. Chicopee, 301 Mass. 447.
The measure of economy adopted in the present case was technically a suspension of the petitioner and all his fellow
The need of economy may be “proper cause” within G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 31, § 45, for the suspension of a civil service employee. Barnard v. Lynn, 295 Mass. 144, 145, and cases cited. It does not follow that a municipality may solve its economic problem resulting from a shortage of money, by suspending all its employees within a certain class for a part of their working time, in order that all may remain at work for fewer hours a week and therefore with smaller weekly earnings. However just such a solution may appear, it contravenes a state-wide policy to which a municipality must bow. By G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 31, § 3, the “board,” consisting of the commissioner and associate commissioners of civil service, was empowered to make rules governing,. among other things, “the selection of persons to be employed as laborers or otherwise in the service of the commonwealth and said cities and towns.”
Writ to issue.