In re: Jacob Carnelli
2020 VT 12
By: Jacob Oblak
Over the past recent decades, administrative law has expanded and become much more complicated. Administrative agencies have expertise in their various fields, so courts will generally defer to agencies for their decisions. (For a humorous, 2-minute crash course on legal deference, put on by law students in the wild, look no further.)
Each agency is made up of state employees, who all work under an employment contract called the collective bargaining agreement (CBA). It’s negotiated by the State and the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA), which is the labor union for state employees. When there’s a state employment contract disagreement, the Labor Relations Board will hear and decide the issue. Also as a matter of administrative law, courts will defer to findings of fact and decisions made by the Labor Relations Board about the CBA.
Normally, those two versions of legal deference don’t collide.
Enter Jacob Carnelli.
Carnelli worked as a correctional officer until he got hurt while off-duty. As a result of the injuries, he was unable to continue his employment as a correctional officer. The CBA allows people in his situation to slide into a different state job if they meet the minimum qualifications for a new position. After using medical leave, Carnelli looked for a different state job.
There happened to be a spot open at the DMV, as a customer service specialist. The job required high school graduation plus 2 years of clerical (office) work experience, or completion of a 1-year tech training program in business or office occupations plus 1 year of clerical work experience.
Carnelli had a 4-year bachelor’s degree in sociology, hadn’t completed a tech program, and a total of 15 months of clerical work experience, so about 9 months short. However, he had worked as a correctional officer for more than 5 years, where he had done paperwork, answered telephones, logged information, and managed mail. Carnelli decided to apply.
The HR coordinator said no, you don’t have 2 years clerical work experience, which the contract clearly requires. The VSEA (labor union) appealed to the Labor Relations Board.
The Labor Relations Board disagreed with HR and the DMV, essentially saying that they can’t have such a narrow definition of “pertinent clerical experience” and should have considered all the clerical duties Carnelli performed as a correctional officer. The Board said Carnelli’s 5 plus years should have counted for at least the missing 9 months of relevant clerical experience and told HR to give Carnelli a similar job (while the appeal was pending, someone else got that particular position).
Then, the Attorney General’s Office stepped in and appealed the Labor Relation Board’s decision to the Vermont Supreme Court on behalf of the DMV/HR/State of Vermont. The VSEA represented themselves as the labor union on behalf of the state’s employees, collectively.
The Supreme Court began its analysis by remarking on the obvious: the Court normally defers to agencies, like the DMV, for decisions like what kinds of qualifications they need from their employees. Contrastingly, the Court normally defers to the Labor Relations Board on matters of interpreting the CBA contract. So the big question for the Court was this: who should defer to whom.
The Court held that the Labor Relations Board should have deferred to the DMV as the DMV has the expertise to know what kind of qualifications it needs for its employees. Besides, the language of the contract was clear: it required 2 years of office clerical work, not the equivalent of 2 years office clerical work.
Being a correctional officer isn’t clerical work, even if they did paperwork and answered the phone. Whatever clerical work a correctional officer does is incidental to their main function, which is to ensure safety and security at the correctional facilities. They aren’t office workers. The Court found that the Labor Relations Board’s decision essentially rewrote the minimum qualifications into something it wasn’t.
The upshot for this case is that because Carnelli didn’t have the minimum qualifications, he couldn’t have that job. At least as written now, the CBA contract for state employees doesn’t allow the state to substitute incidental work experience for occupational work experience in the field required by the position.
The bigger picture is that the Labor Relations Board overstepped its own authority. The Court basically told the Labor Relations Board, if you had deferred to the DMV’s definition of its minimum qualifications, we would have deferred to your decision. But you didn’t defer to the DMV, so we won’t defer to you.