Court confirms arbitrator’s overtime award – doesn’t find “pyramiding”

By John H Curley on July 22, 2018

An earlier post (Pyramiding overtime – Employer challenges arbitrator’s award) discussed an award of Arbitrator Mathew Frackiewicz sustaining a grievance Armstrong County Memorial Hospital claimed was improperly seeking to “pyramid” overtime.

The dispute concerned the pay treatment for an employee who worked during Christmas week 2016. Christmas that year fell on a Sunday. Pursuant to the cba, several holidays, including Christmas, “are also counted as hours worked for the purpose of overtime.” Employees were to receive holiday pay at the straight time rate for holidays not worked. Employees who worked the holiday would receive, in addition to the holiday pay, time and one-half for all hours worked. Grievant received holiday pay for Christmas day. In addition, because she worked that day, she received pay at time and one-half for the hours actually worked. The dispute between the parties turned on whether the eight hours of holiday pay for Christmas, which she would have received whether she worked or not, were to be counted toward the 40 hours worked in a week.

Sustaining the grievance, Arbitrator Frackiewicz concluded;

[T]he 8 hours of holiday pay for Christmas are paid at the straight time rate, as distinguished from hours actually worked on Christmas, which are paid atbthe premium rate. Adding straight time hours on Christmas to the straight time hours worked on other days that week does not constitute pyramiding in the sense of counting hours paid at premium rate toward the threshold for a weekly overtime premium.

As indicated in the earlier post, the Hospital announced its intention to seek to vacate the award. The District Court has now rejected that effort. Armstrong County Memorial Hospital v. Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals.

Reviewing the award, the Court found the award:

…is rationally derived from Section 10.3 of the CBA, which spells out that hours paid for contractual holidays, including Christmas, are counted for purposes of overtime. Additionally, although not specifically addressed in detail in the Arbitrator’s decision, this Court finds further justification for the position of the Arbitrator in the language of Section 18.4 which states that “[n]urses who are scheduled and who work on a holiday . . . will be paid time and one-half for all hours worked and will receive holiday pay as well.” This language explicitly explains that nurses will receive holiday pay as well as time and a half when they work on a holiday. The plain language of Section 10.3 (along with Section 18.4) more than adequately supports the conclusion reached by the Arbitrator, is rationally derived from the language of the CBA, and the decision of the Arbitrator draws its essence from the agreed upon language of the CBA.

The Court similarly found no basis for the Hospital’s claim that the arbitrator had exceeded his jurisdiction “[b]y ignoring the mandate of Section 10.5 of the CBA that pay not be made more than once for the same hours,” noting that the language was not as straightforward as the Employer claimed.

Finding the Arbitrator’s award rationally derived from, and based on, the CBA, the Court denied the request to vacate.