When union members wonder why their unions are so often maligned, it is stories like this one out of New Mexico that is all-too-often the reason why so many people feel that unions have lost their way:
Metropolitan Detention Center guard Torry Chambers is still on the payroll. Still gets a paycheck courtesy of the taxpayers. That’s despite a nearly $1 million settlement Bernalillo County paid in mid-2012 to three female Metropolitan Detention Center inmates who more than three years ago accused him of rape.
And those checks are likely to keep on coming despite the fact that Chambers, at last, has been indicted on eight counts of rape.
The county actually did try to move Chambers out of his job after rape allegations surfaced. But the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents corrections workers, successfully filed a grievance, and he was moved to an all-male unit where he remained until September 2013.
Then, another female inmate accused him of rape. So he’s been on paid leave ever since as he waits for the slow wheels of justice to turn.
The union cited a clause in its contract that does not allow for unpaid leave. So, it would seem, moving an accused rapist away from his prey and off the payroll is subject to union negotiations. In 2012 the county allowed Chambers to work in an all-male cell. But after the fourth inmate accused Chambers of rape he was put on paid leave. [Emphasis added.]
You can read the rest of this story here but, the point is worth mentioning that when unions spend their members’ money in providing persons accused of such heinousness protection, at a company’s (or in this case, taxpayer’s) expense, it puts unions in a bad light.
If unions want to begin working on their negative public image while protecting their members’ interests, unpaid leave would be a more prudent course and, if the individual is eventually deemed innocent, then back pay could be awarded.
However, AFSCME’s actions in a case such as this does nothing for either the union, its members, or the public at-large who, in this case, is paying the bill.
