Jim Cline and Erica Shelley Nelson
Representing the Injured or Disabled Member Part 1: Introduction
This article is the 1st in a multiple part series covering the rights your injured and disabled members have and how you, as a union or guild representative, can best assist them. Over the next two to three months, we’ll be publishing, in various segments, information on how state and federal laws protect your members who are hurt or otherwise unable to work. We’ll cover topics including disability discrimination law, the FMLA, job protection rights under the CBA, workers compensation, disability benefits, and the right to bring a civil lawsuit.
The topics we are covering all also going to be addressed in detail in an upcoming book we’re publishing: Helping the Injured or Disabled Member: A Guidebook for the Washington Law Enforcement and Fire Union Representative. It is also our intention over the course of the next year to travel through the state and provide training to public safety union and guild representatives on how best to enforce these rights. Expect to hear more on that in the months ahead.
The First article in these newsletter series provides an overview and introduction to this series. For more information, visit our Premium Website. On the website you’ll find an on line version of the Injured or Disabled Member’s Guidebook and other information on the laws covering your members.
When a public safety employee suffers an injury or otherwise develops a medical condition which impedes his or her ability to do ordinary duties, the stakes are raised. A very livelihood is threatened. Especially for those employees in physically arduous occupations like commissioned law enforcement, corrections, or firefighting, such limitations may ultimately result in the loss of a career. In this series, we address what legal protections injured and disabled employees have in this process, both in the short-term and in the long-term.
The legal environment for law enforcement officers and firefighters is simply different than for other professions. While there are various state and federal laws that apply to all types of employees, there are many special rules and programs that apply only to law enforcement and firefighters. It is important that a police or fire union leader understand both the general rules and the special rules. While many of the rights described in these series belong to the individual officers and firefighters, you, as an effective union representative will want to be fully versed in what rights your members have both under the law and how those rights relate to the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Some rights you can directly assert as the Collective Bargaining Representative. Other rights are simply beyond the enforcement powers of the union itself. But even in those cases, by fully informing yourself of the universe of rights and the limitations on those rights, you can provide extremely useful assistance to your members at a critical time in which they most need it.
Some of the principles in this series are straightforward and common sense. Many are complex and often involve an interplay between connected (and disconnected) statutory and contractual rights. Many of the rights identified in this series you will be able to directly enforce as a union officer under your CBA. Some rights are individual in nature and can only be enforced by the affected member in court or before an administrative agency. To make matters more complicated, some of the individual rights are “implied” into your CBA and can be enforced through the grievance procedure.
Armed with the knowledge in this series, you should be able to protect the rights of your members through direct action and member advice. On the other hand, many of the issues that arise here will require the involvement and counsel of the union attorney or other civil lawyers.
This series will cover the rights of your injured or disabled members under the ADA, WLAD, FMLA, PDA, IIA, WISHA, LEOFF Supplement, Social Security, PSOBA, and your CBA. We will work to simplify this “alphabet soup” of statutes. But we have to acknowledge that it is not always possible to provide a simple answer in all circumstances because of the sometimes complex manner in which there is “interplay” among these laws.
In the end, we hope you have a practical set of guidelines to follow and resources to turn to in order to help your members. We want to give you a “tool bag” with all the tools that you need in every situation that might realistically arise. At the time they face injury or disqualifying disability, they are most in need of the best possible advice. Our goal is to assist you in getting that advice to them.
