Shira Schoenberg
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — Merrimack County corrections employees will vote later this month on whether to join a new union.
The 113 workers - including corrections officers, shift supervisors, corporals, sergeants, lieutenants and others - will decide Dec. 17 whether to leave the State Employees’ Association to join the National Correctional Employees Union.
Both the SEA and the county have fought the election, but recent rulings by the Public Employee Labor Relations Board cleared the way for it to go forward. A majority vote is required to leave the union.
“We’re a younger organization, and we still have the concept that the union works for the members, the members don’t work for the union,” said Michael Nessinger, president of the National Correctional Employees Union.
The Merrimack County Corrections Department operates the county jail in Boscawen and runs alternative sentencing programs. The SEA has represented the county corrections officers since 1977.
The National Correctional Employees Union, based in Springfield, Mass., was started in January 2008 by Massachusetts correctional officers. It has 800 members in Massachusetts and Maine. The Merrimack County employees would be its first New Hampshire chapter.
Nessinger said he was approached by employees of the Department of Corrections, whom he would not name. Nessinger said employees were unhappy with how contract negotiations had gone and felt the SEA did not have an active presence in the department.
“They’ve been paying for a service, and they haven’t been receiving it,” Nessinger said.
Nessinger said one advantage of the NCEU is that it will supply an attorney to be the lead negotiator during contract negotiations and arbitrations, as opposed to using a field representative who does not necessarily have legal skills.
“Over the last couple of years since we’ve been doing this, our record speaks for itself,” Nessinger said. “We won all our arbitrations. We’re on site. We go to membership meetings.”
Nessinger said the group obtained 7 percent raises plus signing bonuses for members in Massachusetts, despite the recession.
“We think outside the box as far as what can we do to get the best bang for our buck,” Nessinger said.
With 7,000 New Hampshire members, mostly state employees, the SEA is a much larger organization. It is also affiliated with the national Service Employees International Union.
SEA field representative Chris Long said the SEA has represented the Merrimack County corrections employees effectively. Their last contract, in effect from 2007 to 2009, gave workers a 10 percent cost-of-living increase over three years. Though the workers have been without a contract since Jan. 1, Long said negotiations are continuing. The union has spent about $20,000 a year in arbitration, mediation and fact-finding for the county employees.
Long said claims that he has not been an active presence are untrue. He handled between six and 10 grievances at the jail in 2010, and he meets at least once a month with the union and county bargaining teams.
“When I’m there, I’m on the administrative side. . . . Correctional officers in the cell blocks may not see me there,” Long said.
Long said the SEA has the knowledge to operate effectively in New Hampshire. It represents other county correctional officers, along with state and municipal law enforcement.
“We understand all of the issues in New Hampshire,” Long said. “They have no ties to New Hampshire. They don’t have an office (in New Hampshire). We have 25 full-time employees 12 miles away from the house of corrections.”
The corrections employees pay the SEA dues of 1.25 percent of their base pay, and all arbitration expenses are covered. If they switch unions, they would pay the NCEU $10 a week. The local chapter would also be asked to pay one-quarter of the costs of any arbitration proceedings out of a pot of money given to the local chapter by the union to cover expenses.
The NCEU filed a petition to certify the union in mid-October. Attorneys representing Merrimack County first objected that the petition was unsigned and incomplete. But the Public Employee Labor Relations Board overruled the objection. The board certified that more than 30 percent of the employees in the bargaining unit had signed confidential cards authorizing an election.
Both the county and the SEA continued to object. The county objected to the timing of the petition. It also said the bargaining unit comprised too many different types of positions, such as medical professionals, correctional officers and supervisory staff. The county argued corporals and sergeants hold so many supervisory duties that they do not have the same interests as correctional officers.
“Since the antiquated certification of this bargaining unit, there have been numerous changes of circumstances including . . . a movement from one correctional facility to a much larger more modern facility and a change in the method by which the correctional services are delivered,” wrote attorney Warren Atlas, representing Merrimack County.
Reached by phone, Merrimack County Administrator Kathy Bateson said the county is neutral. She would not comment on why the county objected to the petition for certification.
“I have no comment,” Bateson said. “We are not involved. We are a neutral party. It’s between two unions, not Merrimack County.”
Bateson referred questions to jail superintendent Ron White, who said that the jail is not taking a position and that the petition was filed by the county’s labor specialist.
The SEA also questioned the timing of the petition. It made the same argument as in an earlier case involving state corrections employees. Employees can only elect a new union when there is no existing contract in place. The SEA argued that because the existing contracts had an evergreen clause, the old contract should be kept in place until a new one was negotiated. The Labor Relations Board ruled against the SEA in the earlier case, and the ruling is being appealed to the state Supreme Court.
This time, the Labor Relations Board again ruled against the county and the SEA and allowed the election to proceed. The board ruled that the timing of the petition was correct. And it said the argument that supervisory officers should not be included in the bargaining unit would be relevant only if employees were trying to form a new unit. In this case, the same unit is trying to move from one union to another.
Copyright 2010 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor