Question: When can a worker—especially a union member—refuse a management directive or order? [Answer below.]
This story comes via The Gothamist:
Ten MTA employees, including two supervisors, have been arrested in the long-running faked signal inspection scandal that has been roiling the Transit Authority for two years now. The workers are being accused of collectively filing 33 false inspection reports during 2009 and 2010 under the direction of their supervisors. What they were supposed to be inspecting? Oh, just the very mechanisms that control subway traffic.
“Failing to properly inspect the subway system can lead to delays in service and, potentially, endanger the safety of subway riders,” Manhattan DA Cy Vance said in a statement announcing the arrests. Each of the inspectors were charged with one or more felony counts of tampering with public records, which carries a maximum of seven years in prison.
Basically the inspectors were supposed to be going out into the tracks and, after confirming the signals were working, scanning barcodes off the inspected signals. But unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be what these guys were doing. Instead they were simply scanning copies of the barcodes that were kept in one of the inspector’s lockers (which were found by investigators) and saying they’d done the inspections.
Lawyers for the accused say that it wasn’t their fault exactly. It wasn’t like they were getting money out of cheating. As the TWU Local 100, which is footing their member’s legal bills, put it: “Our Signal Maintainers gained no financial benefit, or advantage of any kind by completing these unrealistic workloads, and submitting the reports demanded by management.”
According to the New York Times, the union attorney defending the accused is claiming that the falsification of records came upon orders from above:
Arthur Z. Schwartz, a lawyer for six of the inspectors and their union, said that his clients “were ordered to meet quotas that some might describe as impossible” in order to artificially increase productivity.
“The pressure on these individuals to do this or suffer consequences all came from above,” Mr. Schwartz said outside of court. “And yet all we’ve seen is the guys at the bottom of the chain who are getting in trouble here.”
So, the union’s defense is that the accused should be excused from the transgressions that could have put subway riders’ lives in jeopardy because their bosses told them to do it?
The problem with that argument brings us back to the question at the top of this post:
Question: When can a worker—especially a union member—refuse a management directive or order?
Answer: Nearly every union knows that it is not insubordination for a worker to refuse to follow a management order if the employee believes the order is objectionable, unfair, improper, illegal or a violation of the union contract. While the general rule is “work now, grieve later,” there are some exceptions to this rule, such as when an employee has a reasonable belief that carrying out the work order will endanger the health or safety of him/her self or others.
Unless the accused union members are from another planet, claiming that inspectors shouldn’t inspect whatever they are to inspect is a specious argument at best.
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“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)
