46 Mass. App. Ct. 418 | Mass. App. Ct. | 1999
In 1991 the Civil Service Commission ruled that the selectmen of Dedham acted without justification when they bypassed Patrolman Francis M. Bielawski, who was first on the promotional list for a vacant sergeant’s position, in favor of a patrolman who was third on the list. The commission, as recounted in Bielawski v. Personnel Administrator of the Div. of Personnel Admn., 422 Mass. 459, 460-462 (1996), ordered that Bielawski’s name be placed at the top of the list for the next sergeant’s opening, that the town refrain from using “impermissible reasons” for bypassing him again, and that, “if and when he is promoted to [sjergeant, his promotion date be made retroactive to April 13, 1988,” which was the date of the invalid bypass. A sergeant’s position opened in 1995, and Bielawski was appointed on March 9 of that year.
The town filed a complaint in Superior Court seeking to vacate the arbitrator’s award. The judge agreed with the town, ruling that the arbitrator, by ignoring the seniority accorded Bielawski under the commission’s order, violated his rights under the civil service law, a law which, she reasoned, since it was not one of the statutes enumerated in G. L. c. 150E, § 1(d), prevailed over any contrary mandate based on the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement. The judge thus vacated the award, and the association appealed.
It is, of course, basic that a collective bargaining agreement may not require a result that conflicts with a mandate of State law, unless the law is listed in § 1(d). Recent discussions
The answer, we think, must be negative. The commission’s order concerned seniority, but nothing in the civil service law or in any other law that has been called to our attention by the parties makes a connection between seniority and the allocation of shift and vacation assignments in a municipal police force.
Here the parties to the collective bargaining agreement chose seniority in rank as the governing principle for the allocation of vacation and shift choices: more particularly, as applied to shifts, “seniority by appointment within rank and the order of appointment within rank”; and, as applied to vacations, “seniority within rank.” As applied to Bielawski, these terms were ambiguous because of the seven-year difference between his imputed date of appointment as sergeant and his actual date of appointment in that rank. For purposes of civil service applications, the commission’s order mandated the use of the imputed date.
For purposes of decision, we can assume that the arbitrator answered that legal question incorrectly, in the sense that she settled on an interpretation contrary to that which a court would give if it were interpreting the same bargaining agreement. Nothing is better settled, however, than that an arbitrator’s interpretation of an agreement will not be overturned by a court, see Greene v. Mari & Sons Flooring Co., 362 Mass. 560, 562-563 (1972); Concerned Minority Educators of Worcester v. School Comm, of Worcester, 392 Mass. 184, 187-188 (1984), unless the arbitrator has exceeded the scope of the reference, see School Comm, of W. Springfield v. Korbut, 373 Mass. 788, 792 (1977), or the award violates a law. No contention is made here that the arbitrator exceeded the scope of the reference, and, as we said above, neither the law nor the commission’s order is violated by a contract provision that accords vacation or shift assignments among the sergeants by actual rather than by imputed seniority in rank. Compare Fall River v. Teamsters Union, Local 526, 27 Mass. App. Ct. at 653. It follows, therefore, that the arbitrator’s interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement, right or wrong, should have been allowed to stand.
The order vacating the arbitrator’s award is reversed, and a new order is to be entered confirming the award.
So ordered.
The affected sergeants had been appointed prior to the commission’s 1991 order. See Bielawski v. Personnel Administrator of the Div. of Personnel Admn., 422 Mass, at 460-461.
This was the point made in a letter of advice from the then counsel to the personnel administrator, which concluded, “If Mr. Bielawski’s date of promotion is determined to be March 9, 1995, for the purposes of contractual rights, there would be no conflict with civil service law.” Because of the synergetic relationship between the commission and the personnel administrator, see G. L. c. 31, § 5(a) (establishing the personnel administrator as the commission’s enforcement arm), this letter can properly be assumed to reflect the answer the commission itself would give as to the scope of its 1991 order.
The most common applications of seniority in administering civil service law concern layoffs resulting from budgetary cut-backs or reorganizations, “bumping” rights (the right of a laid-off permanent employee to displace an employee in a lower job title if that employee is junior in length of service), and rights of reemployment to vacant positions. See G. L. c. 31, §§ 39, 40. For these purposes, seniority is determined by length of service in permanent civil service employment, not by length of service in title or rank. G. L. c. 31, § 33. Seniority in rank seems to be of significance only in the context of promotional appointments, governing eligibility for promotion to the next higher job title within one’s unit (G. L. c. 31, § 8), eligibility to sit for the competitive examination to establish the promotional list (G. L. c. 31, § 59), and in determining the training-experience component of the performance evaluation that is one of the weighting factors in computing final grades (G. L. c. 31, §§ 6 A-C, 9, 16, 22, 59). The authority of the commission to adjust appointment dates for remedial reasons seems to stem from St. 1976, c. 534, and St. 1993, c. 310.