Terminated Member Returns to Work

Melody Moten, an LPN employed by Cooper River West Convalescent Center in Pennsauken, NJ was fired from her job on October 11, 2006. Ms. Moten, an eighteen year employee at Cooper River and a long-time former delegate was terminated for allegedly engaging in multiple instances of disruptive behavior. After extensive efforts by the Union failed to settle the resulting grievance, the Union filed for arbitration on behalf of Ms. Moten. After two days of hearings, Arbitrator Tim Brown ruled that Ms Moten had been terminated without just cause, and ordered her reinstated to her job and made whole for all lost wages and benefits, and that all records of the discipline be purged from her personnel file.

More specifically, arbitrator Brown found that Cooper River failed to establish just cause for three reasons.

• Cooper River had condoned the same behavior for which Ms. Moten was terminate for almost the entire eighteen years of her employment. Then, without notice of changed rules, she began receiving disciplines for the same behavior and that quickly led to her discharge.
• Cooper River relied, in part, on disciplines it had previously agreed to remove, for its claim of just cause to discharge Ms. Moten.
• Cooper River failed to investigate the situations that led to Ms. Moten’s discharge.

As a result of the arbitration award, Melody Moten returned to work as an LPN on the day shift at Cooper River West on December 10, 2007. Her return is the result of both her determination to stand up for her rights and the hard work of Delegates Charmaine Brody-Smith and Pat Miller, Organizers Dale Chubin and Dave Shahade and Executive Vice President Peter Gould.

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