The City of Wilmington, Delaware, implemented a final and binding arbitration award with the International Association of Firefighters, Local 1590. A firefighter, identified only as “the Grievant,” was on injury leave and was required to report to the City’s Medical Dispensary on five separate dates for reevaluation. The Association contended that these mandatory reports constituted a “call-back” under Article 11 of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement, which guaranteed a minimum of four hours of pay at an overtime rate for such incidents,
After the grievance was denied at multiple steps, the Association advanced it to arbitration.
The arbitrator issued his award on March 18, 2022, sustaining the grievance “as to [the Grievant].” However, the award contained a critical limitation, stating it “shall not apply to firefighters who have not or do not file grievances within” the contract’s ten-day filing deadline. This language created a dispute over the award’s scope: the City interpreted it as applying only to a single grieved incident on August 28, while the Association argued it encompassed all five dates the Grievant was called back.
Weeks after receiving the award, the Association inquired about payment. The City subsequently paid the Grievant for four hours of overtime for the August 28 date. The Association then demanded payment for the other four dates, totaling sixteen additional hours of overtime. When the City did not comply, the Association filed an unfair labor practice charge on June 22, 2022, alleging the City violated its duty to bargain in good faith by refusing to implement the arbitration award and thereby unilaterally changing the negotiated grievance procedure. Shortly after the charge was filed, on July 1, 2022, the City issued a payment to the Grievant for the remaining sixteen hours, though it continued to deny any obligation to do so under the award, stating the payment was made “in the interest of resolving this matter in an expeditious manner.”
The sole remaining issue before the Delaware Public Employment Relations Board was whether the City’s initial, narrow interpretation of the award and subsequent settlement payment constituted an unfair labor practice, and specifically, whether the Association was entitled to recover its attorney’s fees for having to file the charge to secure full payment. The Association argued the City’s delayed compliance was purposeful and indicated bad faith that compelled the Association to incur legal expenses. The City argued the charge was moot and that there was no statutory basis for awarding attorney’s fees under the state’s public sector labor law.
The Board dismissed the charge in its entirety. Its reasoning focused on the absence of bad faith. The Board found that the parties had a “genuine disagreement” over the arbitrator’s intent, noting the award’s language limiting its application to those who had filed timely grievances created ambiguity. The Board concluded that the City’s initial payment for only the August 28 incident was a good-faith interpretation of this ambiguous award, not a refusal to bargain. The Board held that the City’s subsequent decision to pay the disputed sixteen hours to settle the matter “is the antithesis of bad faith,” as the City’s statutory obligation is to seek to resolve disputes.
“There is no evidence the City interfered with either the Grievant’s rights or the IAFF’s rights and obligations to effectively represent the Grievant,” the Board found.
Regarding attorney’s fees, the Board provided a detailed analysis, noting such awards are an “extraordinary remedy” in Delaware, reserved for “egregious instances of fraud or overreaching.” The standard requires a finding that a party “acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for inappropriate reasons.” The Board cited its precedent, which states that to justify fee-shifting, the motives must be “fraudulent or inequitable, in a callous disregard of its obligations and for an improper purpose.” Merely arguing an unsuccessful legal position or breaching a contract is insufficient. The Board found the Association failed to meet this high bar, as the record contained no evidence of egregious misconduct by the City. The City’s litigation tactic — settling a small monetary dispute to avoid further cost — did not, “without something more, support a finding of bad faith.”
City of Wilmington, X DE PERB 9027 (DE.PERB).