A federal agency responsible for mediating disputes between the District of Columbia and its employees is lashing out at the city for defaulting its share of the bills.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service provides impartial mediators to local governments for disputes with its unions.
“This agency has received far too many complaints from arbitrators regarding the District of Columbia’s slowness in paying and sometimes failure to pay,” Federal Mediation’s Vella Traynham wrote in the letter to the city’s chief labor lawyer. A copy of the letter has been obtained by The Examiner.
Federal Mediation is already refusing to assign arbitrators in some cases, Traynham’s note states.
The letter, dated April 9, puts new pressure on Mayor Adrian Fenty’s reform efforts. Without arbitration, D.C. might face tens of millions in litigation fees to settle employee disputes, experts say.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of arbitration cases now pending in the city’s docket, employees union leaders say. Since Fenty took over as mayor, complaints have skyrocketed, they say.
The District, like most cities, puts arbitration clauses into its employees’ contracts to save court costs. The fees are supposed to be paid by whichever side the arbitrator determines is the “sole loser” in cases in which there is no sole loser, the sides are supposed to split the fees.
The typical arbitration costs about $5,000, said Geo Johnson, leader of the local branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents thousands of D.C. employees and is taking on the city in more than a dozen pending cases.
The problem, union leaders say, is that mayor’s aggressive attitude toward city employees has created a massive backlog of cases.
And Fenty is losing or “tying” so many cases that he has exceeded his arbitration budget.
“They claim they’re out of money,” Johnson said.
Attorney General Peter Nickles, whose agency is supposed to monitor such matters, said that in fact his agency has been paying on time. He said there were only “a couple” of instances in which the city hadn’t paid. His agency has asked the federal government for an explanation, Nickles said.
The police union alone has 150 pending arbitration cases, Chairman Kris Baumann told The Examiner. The taxpayers’ bill is likely to be staggering, he said.
“Since Peter Nickles has taken over the Attorney General’s Office, it has been one loss after another. Somebody ought to take a look at what’s happening when they can’t even pay for their losses,” Baumann said.
