Between January 1, and August, 2015, the West Virginia Public Employees Grievance Board decided in favor of state workers fourteen times. Nine of those were grievances file by UE Local 170.
Of the Union cases, three involved the reversal of wrongful discharge from employment. In one case, a hospital maintenance worker was pressured into resigning based on the facility’s threat that he would otherwise be fired for testing positive in a drug test for a prescribed medication. In the second, a health service worker was falsely accused of sexual misconduct with a psychiatric patient. In the third, a child protective service worker with an exemplary work history was found to have been wrongfully fired for a clerical error on a rushed initial draft of a visitation report.
The remaining Union grievance victories cover a range of state agency policy violations:
- A state nursing home was found to have systematically misapplied the existing shift differential pay policy in such a way as to cheat employees on earned compensation
- The Division of Highways was found to have improperly determined the basis upon which an employee would be allowed to return to work after an on-the-job injury,
- A psychiatric hospital employee was improperly transferred in her job assignment in retaliation for prevailing in a previous grievance,
- An employee was found to have been improperly docked pay in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
- An employee was found to have been given an unpaid suspension without good cause.
- An employee was found to have been improperly denied paid witness leave by both her agency and the state Division of Personnel for complying with a subpoena in a criminal trial.