Since our last posting on this issue there has been a lot of back and forth between the Union and the Town, unfortunately with little actual progress. You may have seen the story in the Hartford Courant recently about what's been going on, we'll go into a little more detail here. Human Resources Director Santiago Malave has continued to refuse to release the score sheets and evaluator notes from the oral board interviews, which would answer all the questions anyone has about the process. He won't show them to the Union Officers, or to the individual employees who partook in the interviews, using excuses ranging from secret proprietary information, to protecting employees privacy (Even from themselves apparently.).
The Town made an offer shortly after we filed the grievance to re-do the oral boards on the condition that all 10 candidates consent to the do-over and sign waivers agreeing not to sue. This offer was rejected by several of the candidates for various reasons including a desire to find out what really happened.
On July 23rd we attended the step 2 hearing for our grievance with Director Malave, and on July 31st we received his decision which (shockingly) states he didn't violate the contract or personnel rules. Obviously we expected this outcome going into a hearing where the Director would be ruling on the propriety of his own actions, as nonsensical as that may be. During our hearing we made a proposal asking Malave to agree to withhold from certifying the eligibility list and making promotions until the grievance process concluded without the Union having to file an injunction. In exchange we would agree to go to expedited arbitration instead of utilizing the regular, lengthy process.
During expedited arbitration we would only use one arbitrator and receive a ruling from the bench on the same day, which would drastically cut down on the time it would take to resolve the issue one way or the other. We proposed this as a benefit to the Town since it's in their interest to get this dispute over with so they can get the promotions made and fill their vacancies, potentially saving them tens of thousands of dollars in overtime costs. For our part the Union also has no interest in holding things up any longer than necessary and we'd love to see our members get promoted as soon as possible through a fair and impartial process.
Several days later we received Director Malave's response to our proposal, he agreed to hold up the personnel appeals until after the grievance concluded, which would effectively stay the promotions as we requested. However, he surprised us by declining to utilize the expedited arbitration process in favor of the regular one which could take this from being resolved in a matter of a few months and drag it out for potentially up to nearly two years.
In the time it'll take to resolve this matter, several more Sergeant vacancies will open, resulting in squads and units going without regular full time first line supervisors which could be highly disruptive to their work. Additionally any vacancies created in minimum staffing Patrol positions will have to be filled with supervisors on overtime. While this is great for our members getting an opportunity to make some extra money, it could lead to people being ordered in on their days off and holidays, and stretch our overtime budget that the Administration claims is already maxed out, past it's limits becoming very costly to the Town.
This doesn't make any sense on the Town's part, we have made every effort to help expedite this process and get the problem resolved one way or the other for the good of the Town, the Agency, and the Union, and yet Director Malave keeps seemingly throwing roadblock after roadblock in the way of getting it done. When you look at this unexplainable behavior combined with the hiding of documents and the inconsistent scoring, it all seems to indicate that this promotional process was tampered with, and Director Malave either being involved with the tampering, or trying to cover it up after the fact.
While our Police Department has never experienced controversy like this around a promotional exam, it's not the first time for East Hartford or Director Malave. As you can see here and here our Fire Department recently spent nearly four years fighting a similar battle of a botched oral board exam that resulted in several appeals and retests. The common thread here is Director Malave and his Human Resources Department. How is it possible that one HR Department can mishandle two promotional oral board panels in such a short time? Administering these exams is a basic function of their Department, they should have laid out, consistent, and impartial protocols to carry them out seamlessly. At the very least they should've learned from the Fire Department debacle and done something to ensure it didn't happen again. If this simple job is so hard for them to complete properly and without controversy, then what else is being mishandled by HR that we don't know about? As a result, I have no faith in Director Malave's ability to properly carry out the basic functions of his job and lead his Department, and I feel it is long past time for Mayor Leclerc to replace him with someone more competent and capable of doing this important job.
For the Union's part, we have filed our grievance to step 3 at the Labor Board along with a motion to obtain the scoring documents we requested. For now we have to sit and wait for this process to play out.
