Not so fast, slick

Court blasts slap on wrist for lewd ‘oil’ remark

A BRONX bus driver and former union big accused of telling a female supervisor he wanted to “oil her down” can’t slip away from the sexual harassment charge against him.

An appellate court issued a blistering decision earlier in the week that tossed a prior ruling from an arbitrator that let bus driver and union official Tony Aiken avoid a firing.

The arbitrator had ruled that Aiken’s lewd remarks did not “rise to the level” of sexual harassment — but the appellate court strongly disagreed.

Judge Sallie ManzanetDaniels, who wrote the decision for the five-judge panel, lambasted the arbitrator for the “irrational” decision and a “‘blame the victim mentality’” that “belies the realities of workplace sexual harassment.”

The arbitrator’s ruling “emboldens future harassers to engage in pernicious misconduct, knowing that they are likely to receive little more than a slap on the wrist as punishment,” the appellate decision said.

Aiken, who had served as a high-level Transport Workers Union Local 100 official, allegedly made sexually explicit remarks to bus dispatcher Tulani Melendez in 2012 at the Kingsbridge depot.

“Isn’t she fine? What would you do if you had a woman like her at home?” Aiken allegedly remarked loudly as bus operators reported to Melendez for assignments. “I wouldn’t leave the house. I would stay in bed all day. I would oil her down.”

After Melendez sent a 13-page complaint to NYC Transit’s Equal Employment Opportunity office, an investigation found that that Aiken (inset) had made unwelcome sexual comments.

The Transit Authority charged that Aiken created a hostile work environment for Melendez and other women workers.

But arbitrator Stephen O’Beirne — who agreed with factual findings in the Transit Authority’s investigation — ultimately blamed Melendez. He said as a supervisor, she failed in not reporting the harassment sooner, according to the decision.

O’Beirne to comment Friday.

Aiken eventually got a 10-day suspension and an order to take a course on sexual harassment training — a “meager” punishment, the appellate judge wrote Tuesday. declined

Attorney Arthur Schwartz, who represented Aiken and Local 100, vowed to take the case to the state’s high court, the Court of Appeals.

“The Appellate Division decision runs contrary to the law that should have been applied to an arbitration award,” Schwartz told the Daily News.

NYC Transit said it will keep pushing to fire Aiken in a new, court-ordered arbitration hearing.

“The arbitrator’s decision had prevented the Transit Authority from terminating an employee who was found to have committed sexual harassment,” MTA spokesman Shams Tarek said in a statement. “As the court recognized in its ruling, it is critical that the Transit Authority be permitted to effectively enforce policies that protect its employees against workplace sexual harassment.”