A Lancaster County District Court judge issued a decision in November affirming a decision of the Nebraska State Personnel Board that union members may not file a grievance if they are denied an opportunity to reclassify their position. This is an important issue to union members, and NAPE/AFSCME plans to file an appeal to the Nebraska Court of Appeals.
The case before the court began when our member, a Maintenance Technician for the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission, submitted a Personnel Description Questionnaire (PDQ), seeking to reclassify his position from Maintenance Technician to Maintenance Specialist.
His PDQ was rejected by the State Personnel Director, and a grievance was filed alleging a violation of Article 19.1 of our labor contract because the state failed to properly classify his position based on the duties and responsibilities he performed.
The State of Nebraska moved to dismiss the grievance, arguing that reclassification denials are not grievable, because Article 19 contains provisions for classification appeals, however, only if the member is demoted as a result of the denial. That did not happen in this case, and, therefore, NAPE/AFSCME argued that the grievance was proper and needed to be decided on the merits.
A Hearing Officer agreed with NAPE/AFSCME that the matter was grievable, but recommended the grievance be denied on the merits. The State Personnel Board rejected the Hearing Officer’s recommendation, and instead found that reclassification denials are not grievable.
NAPE/AFSCME filed an appeal to the District Court, and Lancaster County District Court Judge Darla Ideus affirmed the decision of the State Personnel Board. Judge Ideus found that the grievance procedure in Article 4 and the reclassification appeals procedure in Article 19 are inconsistent. Because of the inconsistency, Judge Ideus found that the more specific language in Article 19 applies, and therefore, there is no recourse unless the employee suffers an adverse economic impact from the decision of the State Personnel Director (demotion). A full copy of the decision is available here.
Our union and the state agreed in Article 19.1 that the state must classify employees appropriately. The classification appeals panel in Article 19.1 only addresses a situation where an employee is demoted as a result of their reclassification request. We do not believe that language eliminates the grievance process if an employee’s reclassification request is simply denied and the employee remains in the same job classification.
To protect our member’s rights, we plan to file an appeal to the Nebraska Court of Appeals in early December. We expect the appeal to take a year or more in order to reach a conclusion.