photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

City of Lawrence workers affiliated with Teamsters Local Union No. 696, joined by folks affiliated with a handful of other unions, demonstrate outside Lawrence City Hall Tuesday, June 20, 2023.

A Douglas County judge on Thursday denied motions for summary judgment filed by both the City of Lawrence and Teamsters Local No. 696, the union representing the city’s solid waste and Municipal Services and Operations employees, in a dispute over workplace conditions and unresolved grievances.

Summary judgment is a ruling that can be made as a matter of law; that is, when a judge finds there are no issues of material fact in a case.

The city had filed its motion for summary judgment in June, and on Thursday the city’s attorney, Ryan Denk, argued that the court simply did not have jurisdiction to make any ruling regarding grievances filed by the union. He said that the memorandum of understanding between the union and the city specifically outlines a process for grievances that does not include third parties such as the court.

He said in addition to the court having no jurisdiction, there is no relief that the court could grant to the union or its members as there isn’t a method of relief defined by the city and the union’s agreements.

Judge Mark Simpson denied the city’s motion and said that while the agreement between the city and the union does say that the internal grievance procedure is the sole remedy, he does not believe that means the court has no role to play. He said his view was that the court’s role is to enforce the agreement between the parties. However, Simpson did not say what possible relief the court could offer the parties.

The union’s attorney, Cayla Rodney, had also filed a motion for summary judgment in June. On Thursday Rodney argued that the union had presented enough evidence that the city had violated the agreements between the parties on numerous occasions, creating a “pervasive and persistent pattern” of violating workers’ rights to representation in disciplinary matters and in handling grievances.

She said that the city has ignored the established process on multiple occasions, resulting in some grievances not being resolved for months or longer.

Denk countered by saying that some of the grievances Rodney cited had either been previously resolved and the union was just not satisfied with the results, or, in other cases, incidents should not have been classified as grievances at all and therefore are not subject to the grievance process.

Rodney asked the court for relief by ordering the city to abide by the agreements the parties have already signed. She also asked the court to rule in the union’s favor in reference to a specific grievance that sanitation drivers filed in 2022 related to mandatory overtime issues; workers were originally allowed to go home after completing their routes but the city changed its policy so that workers were required to help other drivers complete their routes before going home. Rodney argued that the city refused to acknowledge the grievance for months and declined to submit it to the city manager for review.

Denk said the overtime issue was a contract dispute, not a grievance, and that the court could not give the union any relief it seeks because the court has no authority over the city’s contract negotiations.

Simpson denied the union’s motion as well, saying that it is clear that factual disputes remained as to how grievances have been filed and how they have been resolved and in some cases whether those grievances are subject to the agreements between the parties. He said those fact issues can only be resolved during a trial after all of the evidence is presented.

The trial is scheduled for three days starting on Sept. 23.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the petition was filed by the union in June of 2023, and it alleges that city officials obstructed efforts to process grievances, refused to discuss working conditions in good faith and seemed to take a number of actions to retaliate against an employee for filing a grievance days before, including allegedly ordering that employee to paint tanks in the rain and watch 40 hours of training videos as part of the discipline being challenged in their grievance.

The petition also alleges that city officials refused to discuss the union’s concerns about employees being instructed to operate front loader trucks unsafely.

The union argues in the petition that those alleged issues were violations of the agreement between the city and union employees. The union is asking for the city to be compelled to process a number of outstanding grievances as part of the civil suit.