In Meagher v. Andover School Committee, et al., Civil Action No. 13-11307-JGD (2015), a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Andover School Department, and the Andover School Committee violated the First Amendment rights of a teacher by terminating her employment in retaliation for protected speech. In 2012, while the union and the school committee [...]
A recent Massachusetts Appeals Court decision overturned a Department of Labor Relations ruling in a case where the Police Department replaced a sworn officer with a civilian dispatcher on the desk. The court specifically rejected the argument that a position was eliminated in dispatch for a police officer, observing that “the assignment to dispatch/desk duties [...]
The recent DLR case City of Boston and SEIU Local 888 (MUP-12-2332) presented the question whether the City had bargained to impasse about a transfer of bargaining unit work (crime scene lighting trucks) from the SEIU to Boston Police Detectives. The City gave the Union four weeks’ notice of its proposed change, met with the [...]
It has been four years since the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board ("CERB") took the view that municipal employers have a duty to bargain health insurance contribution rates of certain retirees, i.e. current employees who will retire in the future. Under CERB’s logic, an employer could unilaterally alter the health insurance contribution rate of persons already [...]
For the last seven years, employers have had the right to control the use of their email system by banning employee communication regarding union-related activities, so long as the ban applied to all non-work-related communications and did not discriminate against union activity. In a recent decision, Purple Communications, Inc. v. Communications Workers of America, [...]
The Department of Labor Relations issues a decision against the Town in a case dealing with Plymouth’s implementation of a policy that addressed the use of cell phones during work hours.