PERB Upholds Reinstatement Of Fired DC Caseworkers

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

“Without my union I don’t know where I’d be today,” said an exuberant Nicole Smith Tuesday as her fellow caseworkers cheered outside the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) in southeast DC. Smith and two of her colleagues had just won another ruling reinstating them after being wrongfully fired two years ago in the Banita Jacks case, the high-profile case that resulted in the deaths of four young sisters in 2008. “This is a day that has been a long time coming,” said AFSCME District Council 20 Executive Director Geo T. Johnson at the noontime rally with members of AFSCME Local 2401, which represents the CFSA workers. “This is a long overdue victory,” Johnson added, “made harder by Mayor Fenty, who tried to derail us from our path to justice. But we did not quit and we were not to be denied.” The ruling by the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) upheld an earlier ruling in the workers’ favor, in which the arbitrator said that “basic notions of fairness and due process have not been met in this case.” Johnson and other supporters of the fired workers called on Fenty to immediately reinstate Smith and her two dismissed colleagues, vowing to take the battle “to the Supreme Court, if necessary, as well as to the ballot box in September.”
- report/photo by Chris Garlock