Tuesday, July 04, 2000
Butler workers' contract on hold
Judge intervenes in engineer's pact
By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — A judge on Monday ordered a two-week hold on a controversial new contract for the Butler County engineer's employees.
Butler County commissioners went to court Friday seeking a restraining order after reading the proposed contract.
After a two-hour hearing involving five lawyers in Butler County Common Pleas Court, Judge Keith Spaeth issued a temporary restraining order prevent ing Engineer Dean Foster and Auditor Kay Rogers from implementing a contract between the county and Teamsters Local 100.
The union represents 50 employees in the engineer's office.
Ms. Rogers hasn't taken a position on the contract but asked Judge Spaeth to appoint someone other than Prosecutor John F. Holcomb's office to represent her interests in the case. By law, Judge Spaeth said, he had to deny that request until Ms. Rogers pleads her case to the county commissioners.
Another hearing on the contract is set for July 17. Judge Spaeth must decide whether his court has authority to take further action or whether the case should be referred to the State Employment Relations Board. He also must decide whether the county commissioners have the right to oppose the contract even though they approved a fact-finder's recommendations for resolving a couple of the issues in it.
The commissioners and their lawyers have called the contract a “sweetheart deal” and alleged that Mr. Foster, who is leaving office at the end of this year, is trying to saddle them with a costly deal granting extraordinary benefits to the workers. They say he is acting out of resentment, since the county Republican Party refused to endorse him for re-election this year and instead endorsed candidate Greg Wilkens, who is running unopposed.
Doug Duckett, the county's attorney who handles labor issues, said the contract contains “rather outrageous demands,” such as a $300 contract signing bonus per employee and two hours of overtime pay for employees who work less than a half-hour past quitting time.
But lawyers representing Mr. Foster and the union dispute those characterizations.
Butler County Assistant Prosecutor Victoria Daiker, who represents Mr. Foster, said the signing bonus was “perfectly reasonable,” considering that the engineer's employees haven't received a pay increase since 1997, when they were unionizing.
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