From Ohio
Question: Does a local labor union have a responsibility to its members concerning discrimination issues, whether age, gender, or race related? If discrimination is proven does that change the responsibility of the union towards its members?
Answer: A local labor organization has two areas of responsibility to its members concerning discrimination issues. First, as part of the duty of fair representation and under the specific terms of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, a labor organization has the obligation to refrain from discriminating against any of its members because of the member’s presence in a legally-protected class. Second, if the labor organization has a “non-discrimination” clause in its collective bargaining agreement, the labor organization is required to consider grievances under that clause in the same manner in which it considers other grievances, and may not adopt general policies refusing to process discrimination grievances.
From Arizona
Question: One of the dispatch supervisors was recently doing an internal investigation on one of the dispatchers. The supervisor was listening to the recorded tapes of the phone calls that came in. The supervisor was also listening to other phone calls from the previous day. This resulted in a conversation being listened to that was not part of the investigation and the two people talking were not the person being investigated. This resulted in disciplinary action being taken against one of the employees. Is the listening of conversations not related to the investigation in question a violation of ECPA or another federal statute?
Answer: We’re unfamiliar with the acronym ECPA. However, we see no federal law violation here. We’re assuming the following: (1) The recorded conversations took place on the employer’s phone system; and (2) The employer has notified employees that the phone system belongs to it, and that hence there is no expectation of privacy for conversations occurring on the phone system (virtually all law enforcement employers have such rules). If that is the case, we see no violation of the right to privacy, and federal wiretapping laws wouldn’t apply since the phone lines belong to the employer.