The Haines Borough is dealing with a July 14 grievance from Public Employees Local 71, the borough’s employees union, filed on behalf of former museum director Helen Alten, who was fired on June 30.
A grievance is a formal process for resolving disputes relating to interpretation of the borough’s collective bargaining agreement. Alten said she decided to move forward with the grievance process because she disagreed with the way her firing was handled.
At the time the Haines Sheldon Museum board of trustees let Alten go, they said they eliminated the director’s position to save money, citing recent cuts to the borough’s portion of museum funding.
Public Employees Local 71 business representative Trenton English disputes this logic in a July 14 letter to the board.
“Since the borough’s recently approved budget reflects funding for Ms. Alten’s position, the ‘budget constraints’ reason appears a simple ruse to get rid of Ms. Alten.”
The July 14 letter requests that Alten be reinstated as museum director and compensated for lost wages. The board of trustees denied the request in late July.
The borough’s collective bargaining agreement outlines a four-step process for resolving grievances.
The steps include filing a written grievance with the employee’s supervisor, in Alten’s case the museum board. The board is required to provide a written response. If unable to reach an agreement, the process moves to step two, which puts the matter before the borough manager and step three, which allows the decision to be appealed to the Mayor.
If the borough and the union are still unable to reach an agreement, the process moves to arbitration in which a third party decides the matter.
Alten said she’s not sure where the grievance is in the four-step process. The matter is being handled by English and the union.
English declined to comment on the matter until the grievance has been resolved. The museum’s board of trustees also declined to comment.
The board of trustees is in the process of coming up with a plan to restructure the Haines Sheldon Museum. At recent assembly meetings, trustees have said Alten’s grievance is one of a number of reasons it’s appealing to have workers be nonunion employees of the nonprofit, rather than borough employees.
In total, grievance processes take roughly six months, as outlined in the collective bargaining agreement.