Grievance reveals possible Hatch Act violations

By David Stephanides

A government lawyer was given a five-day suspension for (1)  “inappropriate conduct” towards a female supervisor, which involved loud talking or shouting that was deemed disrespectful and (2) inappropriate conduct regarding use of government property. The lawyer filed a grievance (U.S. Department of Education and AFGE. 17-2 ARB ¶6945. Thomas Coyne).

The hearing was scheduled for 9 am one December morning in 2014. It was at this point that the grievance took a strange turn. Neither party showed up for the hearing. When the arbitrator called them, they said that they were in an adjacent room and would be there shortly. When they arrived, they told the arbitrator that the lawyer and the supervisor had resolved their differences on issue #1 and that he had been reinstated. They jointly informed the arbitrator of their intent to withdraw the grievance. They only briefly mentioned issue #2, noting that a report had been made and that the employer was considering whether to pursue criminal charges.

The arbitrator, however, refused to accept their settlement and dismiss the grievance. Even though no testimony was ever given at the hearing, the parties had submitted a series of exhibits prior to the hearing. Some of those exhibits revealed that the charge underlying issue #2 was the use of a government computer to send emails prior to the 2008 presidential election extolling one of the candidates, possibly in violation of the Hatch Act. More than 800 government employees had apparently sent email messages to school superintendents reminding them that they could lose public funding if the other candidate won. The arbitrator’s justification for refusing to dismiss the grievance was found in the “heavy damages to the general public caused by Issue item 2.” The arbitrator also characterized the joint effort to dismiss a grievance based on an argument between employees as a conspiracy to keep the real issue secret until after the statute of limitations had expired. It is reasonable to presume, the arbitrator said, that the results of the 2008 and 2012 national elections would have been different had criminal charges been made against these employees.

Manipulating a free national election is a crime, he said. If these acts go unpunished, government employees at other agencies will feel free to manipulate future elections. Democracy itself is at risk. As a result, the arbitrator denied the grievance based on issue #1. As for issue #2, he ordered the employer to terminate the lawyer and any other employees who manipulated the election, and he ordered the employer to deny them any benefits, including their pensions. In addition, he ordered prison terms and fines (times and amounts to be determined) for any person found in the exhibit to have violated the Hatch Act as a result of the employer’s internal investigation.

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