Foresters win back pay in out-of-title work settlement Grievance win pays

By KARA E. SMITH
Are you routinely or chronically working out-of-title? If you are, you should consider grieving it. Working out-of-title hurts everyone by taking away potential job or promotion opportunities and cheating you of the higher pay you deserve for doing expanded or higher level work. If you willingly do it for nothing, they'll never pay you for it.

Eight state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) foresters learned this lesson first-hand after enduring years of out-of-title work assignments before finally turning to their PEF representatives for help.
After PEF successfully settled an out-of-title work grievance on the foresters' behalf in January, seven of the eight grievants received back-pay settlements ranging from $1,700 to $3,500.

Unexpected bonus
And the majority of professionals working in the forester title series received title upgrades - an improvement they had been trying to get for nearly 20 years.

"This was truly a victory for the foresters," said PEF Division 169 Council Leader Don Johnson who, along with forester Mike Birmingham, had spent the last few years working to get the salary upgrades approved through the Joint PEF-DEC Labor-Management Committee.

"Not only did these members get back pay for the years they worked out-of-title, it also forced the state to upgrade the entire title series, an action which had been warranted for years," Johnson said.

Grievances triggered upgrades
PEF Field Representative Kurt Minersagen, who represented the foresters in this case, saw a direct link between the state's abrupt decision to approve the upgrades and the foresters' decision to grieve the out-of-title work.

"PEF Division 169 had been working on getting these upgrades for nearly 20 years and suddenly the agency approved them," Minersagen said. "I know the upgrades were not a coincidence."

"What probably happened was that agency heads looked at our grievance and realized we had a rock-solid out-of-title-work case," he said. "Our documentation clearly shows these people were working out-of-title. So, DEC pushed the upgrades through to ward off the grievances and avoid paying overtime."

They called it 'acting'
The problems began when the Pataki administration took office in 1996.
"DEC agency heads placed many of the foresters in 'acting' administrative positions," Minersagen said. "The professionals carried out the duties of higher job titles, but were not paid at the higher job rate."

PEF first filed a class-action grievance alleging widespread out-of-title work and acting promotions on behalf of 24 foresters in December 1996. The number of grievants named in the suit later dropped to eight.
In July 1997, DEC unexpectedly approved the title upgrades for forester 2s and 3s - the largest group of members employed in the title series and the majority of those covered by the grievance. Forester 2s went from salary grade 21 to 23, and forester 3s went from salary grade 23 to 25.

"We're really satisfied with the resolution of this case," Minersagen said. "It's unfortunate that it had to take this sort of action for the forester upgrades to be approved, but we're very pleased with the outcome."

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