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Workers, lawyer question motivation of suspensions

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Taylor Sisk

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

CHAPEL HILL – The lawyer representing two suspended Town of Chapel Hill workers said that the tactics town administrators are using are “right out of an anti-labor playbook.” Al McSurely, civil rights lawyer and legal redress chair for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP, is representing Kerry Bigelow and Clyde Clark, who on Sept. 20 were placed on paid administrative leave after public-works management staff reported receiving several complaints against them.

McSurely said he was told the men are facing disciplinary action “up to and including dismissal.”

The town held a pre-disciplinary hearing last Thursday, with McSurely representing Bigelow and Clark. At that meeting, McSurely presented a letter to Public Works Department director Lance Norris requesting that within five days the town provide to him the men’s personnel files, thereby revealing the nature of the complaints filed against them. McSurely said on Wednesday that he had been informed that the files would be turned over to him by the end of the day.

Both Bigelow and Clark say they’ve been told nothing other than that there was a citizen complaint and several by co-workers. They both state that they were unaware of any previous complaints, and contend that they’re being targeted for having filed grievances in the past alleging racial bias in job placements and promotions.

“They’ve really just tried to come up with something,” Bigelow said.

“They’re trying to make an example out of us,” Clark added.

Bigelow won a race-discrimination grievance in February, when he alleged that he had been passed over for a promotion, but nonetheless didn’t receive the promotion.

“I won it,” he said. “But what did I win?”

According to Clark, the suspensions came when he and Bigelow arrived for work on a Monday morning after a Friday on which Bigelow had filed a safety grievance and assisted a co-worker in filing a route-assignment grievance and Clark had made known his intention to file a route-assignment grievance.

Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil released a statement indicating that no information could be released to the public at this time, as it was a personnel matter and the investigation was ongoing.

Michelle Laws, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, and Nathanette Mayo of UE 150 – which has supported workers who have filed grievances and encouraged them to work collectively – drafted a letter to Stancil dated Oct. 8 alleging that the public works’ management’s actions “sent a chilling message to other workers” not to file grievances or “make any criticisms about safety or unfair and discriminatory practices, because, if you do, management will quickly discipline you and set you up to fire you.”

McSurely has also questioned the involvement of Capital Associated Industries (CAI), an organization with offices in Raleigh and Greensboro, which, according to its website, is a “non-profit employers’ association” that helps “more than 1,000 member companies maximize employee engagement and minimize employer liability through human resources and management advice, training, news, survey data, public policy advocacy and consulting services.”

McSurely said he would like to know what CAI offers that the town’s human resources personnel can’t and how much the company is being paid.

“What do these guys know that the town doesn’t know?” McSurely said.

“Allegations or indications of employee misconduct are uncommon in our organization, but when they do occur, we take them seriously,” Stancil said in his statement. “Such matters are investigated thoroughly and fairly, and we act deliberately to make informed conclusions.”

“My best hypothesis is that the town believes the union is making inroads,” McSurely said.

McSurely believes that the suspensions are an “ideologically driven dispute on the part of the town.

“What it smells like is that there is a shift against the idea of building workers’ representation that can sit down across the table and negotiate issues,” he said.

1 thought on “Workers, lawyer question motivation of suspensions”

  1. William Worth says:
    October 26, 2010 at 5:20 pm

    I am a Chapel Hill Transit Driver who happens to be a white guy. I want to voice my support for Bigelow & Clark, while admitting that I do not know every single fact behind their suspension. One reason I feel that they might very well be innocent of all charges is that I myself was subjected to a disciplinary suspension without pay for supposedly sending harassing emails and text messages to my immediate superior. The allegedly offensive messages had were limited to one subject of great import to me: a small but critical clerical error on my part involving schedule selection was going to lead to my losing my seniority and being forced to work the very worst shift onthe seniority list for 4 months despite 9 years of distinguished service for Chapel Hill Transit. The only issue I ever cared about was retaining the few privileges I had logged 9 years of practically perfect attendance to accrue. Namely, a Monday-Friday shift without forced weekend work. No dice. Instead I got a reprimand and inquisitive glances by the investigative team as I faced dismissal and reprimands. Never once was my strident request to have my seniority honored despite my clerical error considered, despite the fact that such consideration would affect only one other co-worker out of 12. So I was suspended for 8 days while they decided whether I was Satan’s helper, my work history was annotated with the charges of “insubordination,” “disrupting operations” and harassment, and most importantly I was told I would report for the worst ever Operator III shift in Chapel Hill Transit history until further notice, including rotating Saturday shifts that sometimes include indefinitely late Saturday work.

    What I learned from the experience was:

    1) There was nothing really personal about the procedure and I was affectively collateral damage in a Kangaroo Court crossfire between upper and middle management. (But that is another story for another time)

    2) Had I been black and from a working class background instead of White and from a middle class background my punishment would probably have been being raked over the coals and fired…… or… (believe it or not) promoted to a position of greater authority, responsibility and pay (depending on how vociferously I complained.)

    You see, it works both ways and all ways in the town of Chapel Hill, a lovely, well-meaning, and beneficent town with the best of intentions where the unintended consequences of trying to do the right thing sometimes woefully stray from the bullseye. It’s too bad, because in many ways it really is a great town with great people, and a great work-place. But the inability to be honest about race relations and equitable arrangements between people of varying social classes make for a systemically volatile workplace. Sadly no one person or group of people is to blame. But the largely unconscious and complicit dishonesty of the many- when aggregated and left unexamined decade after decade- is precisely what is to blame. And everyone pays the price.

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