Fire district union’s lawsuit appears near its conclusion

Contra Costa County has asked the California Supreme Court to review the latest decision in a longstanding legal dispute between the county’s fire district and its unionized employees.

Last month, an appeals court declined to reconsider a 2019 decision of the state’s Public Employees Relations Board, which found that a group of tenured Contra Costa Fire Protection District employees were unfairly denied raises and benefits after they unionized.

The original complaint is more than a decade old, but it may soon come to a conclusion. If the Supreme

Court decides not to take up the case within 60 to 90 days of Nov. 19, many current and former members of the United Chief Officers Association will be entitled to higher wages and back pay.

T he employees stand to receive an enormous payout. At the time of a 2011 hearing on the dispute, the total they said they were owed was an estimated $ 140,000, a figure that would be much higher almost a decade later.

“Our members have been very, very patient in going through this,” said Vito Impastato of the United Chief Officers Association’s local chapter in an interview.

The original complaint covered about a dozen fire battalion chiefs, all of whom have since retired. They alleged in 2009 that fire district leadership had discriminated against the union members by withholding the same “longevity benefit,” or pay raise, after 15 years of service, that nonunion employees received.

But the higher-ups maintained they were free to make distinctions between represented and unrepresented employees in wage negotiations, as long as they didn’t impact the union members’ employment status

he state Public Employees Relations Board in 2019 supported the employees’ claims, reversing an opposite finding by an administrative law judge years earlier.

“By explicitly distinguishing between represented and unrepresented employees and insisting on its intent to compensate the latter group at a higher level, the district’s position inherently discourages union activity,” the board found in its decision.

In a dissenting opinion, Erich Shiners of the public labor board said he did not find that the district’s actions were “inherently discriminatory,” since the employees who received the benefits were higher in rank than the employees who didn’t.

At a Nov. 17 meeting, the Board of Supervisors, which presides over the fire district, decided to ask the Supreme Court to review the case after a state appeals court declined a similar request earlier that month. The county counsel did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite the lengthy legal battle, Impastato said he and other fire district employees are treated well by current leadership, including Chief Lewis Broschard, who started in his position in 2019.

“We have a really good fire chief who takes care of his employees and does the right thing,” said Impastato, a battalion chief who started at the district in 2002. “We’re able to work through our issues without compromising our primary goal, which is to protect life and property.”