Many of you may remember last August I posted a newspaper story about my job as a caretaker that was being eliminated. I filed ADA discrimination charges against my employer early last year. They were notified of the charges in November. Quickly they looked everywhere for a reason to fire me. I was fired on Feb 22nd of this year after a sham of a required Loudermill hearing. My union's lawyer started working on a ADA retaliation charge to take to binding arbitration on May 22nd. The city settled on Friday May 18th. I had a winning hand. I returned to work full time with back benefits, pay, etc... Without a union I would have had to wait close to a year for the State to even investigate the ADA charge and perhaps start the recovery process much later.
Few people are 2-0 versus employers in labor court in one life time. Both of mine happened during Republican administrations (Reagan and W) to boot! Because we settled before arbitration, there is no online info about my latest case.
Here is my old NLRB file:
http://www.nlrb.gov/shared_files/Board%20Decisions/261/261-38.pdfI waited to tell the news through the AFSCME magazine online in the near future. I was asked about my case by a DUer in the know, and figured it was time to tell all my friends on the DU about this. :-) The only down side is I had to resign my board position of the local while I was not employed by the city.
Omaha Steve steward AFSCME local 251