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WILKES-BARRE — Three unfair labor complaints filed within the past two months by the Wilkes-Barre Police Benevolent Association against the city contained new details on the suspensions and firing of the union officials.
The filings with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board in Harrisburg alleged the city retaliated against PBA president Sgt. Phil Myers and its vice president, former Officer Dan Duffy, for engaging in activities protected by their duties as union officials.
Myers was suspended for 12 days and Duffy for seven days on Sept. 6 because they maintain the PBA’s Facebook page used to communicate to union members, according to a Sept. 15 filing.
A posting in April allegedly disclosed confidential department policy and accusations of report altering.
Mayor Tony George, a former city police chief, fired Duffy on Oct. 18 for sending an email a month earlier that the mayor perceived to be a threat, according to one of two complaints filed on Oct. 25.
The disciplinary actions against the PBA officials and other union members drove them further apart from the administration and Police Chief Marcella Lendacky. In the ongoing feud, the union, representing more than 70 patrol officers, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants, maintained Lendacky lacks the experience and ability to lead the department.
City council stepped in and this month approved an independent review of the department by the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association in Harrisburg at a cost of $26,212 to ease the tensions and put a stop to the mounting legal fees from the labor complaints. From 2016 through October 31 of this year, the city has spent $124,576 on labor relations with the police department.
A second unpaid suspension issued to Myers will add to the cost. Last Wednesday he confirmed the suspension, calling it another example of the administration targeting union officials. He said he will appeal it.
The mayor said it was due to a private complaint against Myers and not union related.
In the case that resulted in Duffy’s firing, he sent an email on Sept. 16 to the mayor and city Administrator Ted Wampole regarding the mistreatment of a union member by Commander Ron Foy. Duffy, an instructor at the Lackawanna College Police Academy and former Scranton police chief, notified them the union had compiled a list of other instances involving Foy that would reflect on them if made public, the complaint said.
George identified the threatening passage as, “Your failing to act on a ‘problem laying in wait’ may be a costly one, both tangibly and intangibly. It is a matter of time (sic) someone will need to answer for this.”
The PBA argued the comments were neither so “offensive, defamatory, opprobrious ” to lose protection under state labor law, nor so “obnoxious or violent as to render the employee unfit for service.”
On the date of his firing, Duffy underwent an investigatory interview, according to the third complaint also filed on Oct. 25. Labor law provided what is know as Weingarten rights to Duffy, entitling him to have union representation if he believed the interview could result in discipline for himself or another PBA member.
Duffy did have representation, but it was not one of the five people designated by Myers in an email sent to the police chief in May, according to the complaint. The chief ordered on officer not designated by the PBA to sit in, the complaint said.
The labor board scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. next Jan. 12 in Harrisburg on the complaints and that would coincide with the review by the PCPA that’s expected to last 10 weeks.