On January 23, 2022, Massachusetts’s Medford Firefighters Union President Walter Buckley filed a Step 1 grievance challenging the City of Medford’s refusal to allow firefighter Thomas E. Dunn to assume a light duty position. On May 20, 2022, Buckley filed another Step 1 grievance protesting the City’s refusal to allow Dunn to return to work and alleging a privacy violation. Chief John Freedman denied both grievances on May 31, 2022. That same day, Buckley submitted both grievances to Step 2 with Mayor Lungo-Koehn and requested meetings. The City never responded and never scheduled Step 2 hearings. The Union filed for arbitration on both grievances.
Separately, on May 12, 2022, Buckley filed a Step 1 grievance protesting the bypass of Lieutenant Michael Halloran for promotion to captain. Freedman denied it on May 25, and Buckley submitted it to Step 2 the same day. Human Resources Director Neil Osborne conducted a Step 2 hearing. Buckley spoke in support of the grievance, but no City representative made any statement. Osborne ended the hearing after five to ten minutes and promised a written response. Buckley never received one.
For approximately twenty years, the parties’ collective bargaining agreement contained Article Six, requiring Step 2 hearings where the grievance committee “shall meet with the Mayor or his designate to discuss and attempt to adjust the grievance.” Prior to 2021, the City regularly held Step 2 hearings where both the Union and a City representative made statements. In 2021, Osborne began conducting hearings where he closed the record immediately after Buckley spoke, without any City representative speaking. Buckley complained at the first of such hearings that the City had deviated from past practice.
The Union filed a prohibited practice charge on July 15, 2022. The complaint issued alleged the City repudiated Article Six by failing to hold Step 2 hearings for the light duty and return-to-work grievances, and by altering the Step 2 format for the Halloran grievance.
Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission Hearing Officer Margaret M. Sullivan found that the City was in violation of state labor law.
Reading Article Six’s plain language, the City was required to meet with the Union to discuss and attempt to adjust grievances at Step 2. It was undisputed that the City never responded to the Union’s Step 2 submissions on the light duty and return-to-work grievances and never held hearings. The City’s argument that no collective bargaining agreement was in place failed because the City had stipulated in its answer and at hearing that the agreement was effective at all relevant times.
On the alteration of the format of the hearing, the Hearing Officer dismissed the allegation as untimely. The Union claimed that, beginning in 2021, the City repudiated Article Six by ceasing to have a City representative make statements at Step 2 hearings. Buckley testified that there were “a lot” of such hearings in 2021. The charge was filed on July 15, 2022 — more than seven and one-half months after the last such hearing in 2021. Under DLR regulation 456 CMR 15.04, charges must be filed within six months of when the charging party knew or should have known of the events. Because the alleged repudiation began in 2021 and the Union did not file until July 2022, this charge was untimely.
Sullivan ordered the City to cease and desist from repudiating Article Six and to post a Notice to Employees. Because the parties later settled the underlying grievances, no order to hold Step 2 hearings was required.
City of Medford and Medford Firefighters Union, IAFF, Local 1032, 2025 WL 4659437 (Mass. L.R.C. July 30, 2025).