Arbitrator: Social workers can keep telecommuting

Hundreds of state social workers will be able to telework about 70 percent of the time through the end of December under a labor facilitator’s ruling released Friday.

The binding decision resolves five months of tension between Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration and state government’s largest labor union, Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Arbitrator Michael R. Ricci’s decision, which takes effect immediately, applies to roughly 600 staff assigned largely to the Social Services department’s field offices. The administration and the unions will re-assess working conditions again in early 2022.

Representatives for those workers had filed unfair labor practice complaints against the department, arguing that Commissioner Deidre Gifford failed to follow a July 30 agreement reached between the union and the administration in an attempt to resolve the workfrom-home issue.

“Our members are trained and skilled professionals who are dedicated to fulfilling our agency’s mission,” said Jay Bartolomei, an eligibility services supervisor at DSS and president of AFSCME Local 714, one of two bargaining units within Council 4 impacted by the ruling. “I can’t speak to what motivated the commissioner and her senior management team to disrupt our work and our well-being by ignoring the telework agreement. I can say that our members will appreciate an arbitrator’s decision reaffirming that the telework agreement is fair, reasonable and helpful both to employees and the clients we serve.”

Department of Social Services spokesman David Dearborn said Friday the agency was reviewing the ruling but did not comment further.

Neither the union nor the department got everything it sought in the decision.