Patrick aide accused of meddling in labor cases

Two commissioners on the state's quasi judicial labor relations board are accusing Governor Deval Patrick's chief labor aide of interfering with the agency on cases involving two unions that endorsed Patrick and donated heavily to his gubernatorial campaign.

The two commissioners, Paul T. O'Neill and Hugh L. Reilly, asserted in interviews with the Globe that Suzanne M. Bump made an inappropriate call about a case involving the Boston Teachers Union and pressured the commission to approve a pending petition by Service Employees International Union, Local 1199.

Bump acknowledged the discussions but heatedly denied accusations that she was trying to influence the commission, which is designed by law to be free of political pressures. She said the commissioners, who were appointed by Republican Governor Mitt Romney and are serving out their five-year terms, are attacking her because of the Democratic administration's demands for management changes.

"There is not a single instance of my telling them to make a decision on anything," said Bump, a former legislator from Braintree who served as Patrick's liaison with labor during the campaign.

In late January, O'Neill and Reilly said, Bump made an irate phone call to commission chairman John F. Jesensky after the agency made its initial ruling that the Boston Teachers Union was violating the law with its threats to call a strike. They said she complained to him that she had not been given notice before the decision was made in the case.

Bump "clearly communicated her extreme displeasure, and we clearly got the message that she was unhappy," O'Neill said in an interview this week. Jesensky, who was also appointed by Romney, declined to comment, but O'Neill and Reilly said the chairman briefed them on the call.

About a week later, O'Neill and Reilly said, during a review of the commission's budget, Bump expressed strong support for a petition pending before the commission by Service Employees International Union, Local 1199, which spent more than $600,000 last year in support of Patrick's candidacy.

Under state law, the Labor Relations Commission is an independent, quasi judicial panel that resolves labor disputes and enforces state labor laws. The commission falls within Bump's agency for budgetary reason, but under statute is "in no respect subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

The two commissioners said Bump's discussion of the SEIU contract and the teachers dispute constituted "inappropriate" interference. Reilly said it also raises "ethical improprieties." O'Neill said the agency plans to take their complaint to the governor.

The dust-up between the commissioners and Patrick's chief labor aide reflects some of the tension in the inner workings of the state bureaucracy as Democrats, who rely on union support for their electoral success, try to gain control of agencies that have been controlled and shaped by Republican administrations, which often battled with unions over the past 16 years. In agencies that deal with labor issues, the differences are particularly sharp.

Bump said these clashing philosophies are at the heart of the current dispute, as she attempts to make changes in the commission's operations.

"They have been extraordinarily resistant to even establishing a working relationship," said Bump, now the director of workforce development, who will become Patrick's secretary of labor when his government reorganization takes effect next month. She cited her attempts to move the commission to less expensive quarters to save money and to resolve a huge case backlog. She said the commission had been ignored and neglected for more than a decade by Republican administrations.

While the commission is designed to be independent, Bump is responsible for the commission's budget and can ask questions related to their workload and how much staff they would need to handle the cases before them.

In an interview, Bump acknowledged she told Jesensky that she was upset about the teachers decision because she had talked to him only a few hours earlier and he gave no hint that it was about to be released. "I felt he deliberately tried to avoid my learning of the decision in a timely manner," she said. She said Jesensky wrote her an e-mail apologizing for not notifying her.

But Reilly dismissed Bump's assertions, saying that her sharp words with Jesensky were "by implication" an expression of displeasure with the commissioner's decision against a union that supported Patrick last year.

"We certainly never provided the previous administration advanced notice," he said. "They never asked and we never gave. This is an independent agency."

The Boston Teachers Union's parent affiliate, the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, donated $10,000 to Patrick's campaign committee just a week before he swept to victory last November.

Just over a week after the phone call about the Boston teachers decision, according to O'Neill and Reilly, Bump inappropriately raised a pending case when she met with them and Jesensky to discuss the agency's budget requests. During the meeting, she conveyed the administration's strong support for a petition by Service Employees International Union, Local 1199, to extend collective bargaining rights to personal care attendants for Medicaid clients.

"The message was received that this issue was of great importance to them," O'Neill said. He said Bump's comments were made as the commissioners were arguing for more funding for their beleaguered agency, which the two commissioners described as swamped with more than 600 cases a year.

Reilly said he interpreted Bump's introduction of the SEIU case into the budget discussion as pressure to approve the union's petition. "I took it as a quid pro quo comment," said Reilly. "I don't know how else you would read it. The very discussion of that in any context, but especially the context of reviewing our budget, is an attempt to compromise the independence and integrity of the agency."

Bump, acknowledging she raised the issue of the SEIU petition, said the meeting covered more issues than the labor commission's budget request. At issue, she said, were the commission's management problems, which included dealing with some unusual aspects raised by the SEIU's petition to extend collective bargaining rights to additional workers.

Reilly, an experienced labor relations lawyer who served with the National Labor Relations Board and the US Department of Labor under the Reagan administration in Washington, compared Bump's comments to a litigant in a pending court case privately lobbying the judge sitting on the case.

"This is an independent agency," Reilly said. "It's entirely inappropriate for them to make inquiries of that kind. . . . There are certainly ethical improprieties here."