Helgevold v. Civil Service Com'n
| Decision Date | 26 February 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 83-1490,83-1490 |
| Citation | 367 N.W.2d 257 |
| Parties | Kent HELGEVOLD, Ken Groff, George Land, Dennis Wertz, Carl Grall, Joe McMahon, Donald Hefley, Albert Antolik, Edmond Svaleson, and Clayton D. Chalstrom, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION of the City of Fort Dodge, Iowa, and the City of Fort Dodge, Iowa, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | Iowa Court of Appeals |
Harry H. Smith and MacDonald Smith, Sioux City, for plaintiffs-appellants.
Maurice C. Breen, City Atty., and Terry W. Guinan, Sioux City, for defendants-appellees.
Heard by OXBERGER, C.J., and DONIELSON, and SACKETT, JJ.
This appeal presents issues of first impression affecting public employees and the unions that represent them. The specific issue we address on appeal is whether reducing certain fringe benefits constitutes a demotion which can occur only as specified in our Code. The changes were made within the same class of employees who perform similar duties and receive the same pay. After weighing the varying theories and viewpoints in this area, we hold that, in this instance, where fringe benefits were lowered for some employees and raised for others within the same class, for the purpose of obtaining uniformity of benefits within the class, there has been no demotion.
The appellants represent the class of Command Staff Officers employed by the City of Fort Dodge as supervisory employees in the police and fire department. They appeal the decision of the trial court affirming a civil service commission determination that changes in their employment benefits did not constitute an unlawful demotion. As a result of our holdings, we affirm the trial court ruling.
In using the term "class" we refer to authorities indicating those within a class perform similar duties and are within the same grade of pay. 15A Am.Jur.2d Civil Service, §§ 23, 24 (1976). Appellants do not specifically address the issue of whether the officers constitute a class, and appellees refer to the group as a class. Neither side disputes that the Command Staff Officers perform similar supervisory duties over the police or fire departments, and receive the same pay. Therefore, we find the appellants are within the same class.
As supervisory employees of the City, the Command Staff Officers, who refer to themselves as CSOs, were not part of collective bargaining. Instead, the rank and file they supervised would collectively bargain for wage increases and benefits. The CSOs would receive their wages based on a higher pay grade scale than that used for the rank and file. The CSOs would meet with City personnel, who each year agreed to give the supervisors the same benefits as had been bargained for with the blue-collar workers, plus something extra. The CSOs would receive one or two more holidays than the blue-collar workers, for example, and a maximum of six or seven weeks vacation instead of five given to those in the bargaining unit. Fire department supervisors would negotiate separately from the police supervisors, and the fringe benefits awarded each group accordingly varied between them, although they always received more than the personnel they supervised. Each year a different agreement would be worked out. None of the terms were ever reduced to a writing.
In January 1982, the city personnel director was asked to develop a benefit plan which would be uniform for the management employees who were not a part of the bargaining unit. The report developed was approved after a meeting between the city attorney, city clerk, personnel director, and the mayor, and after changes were made by the Ways and Means Subcommittee of the City Council.
The plan developed provided for uniformity among the supervisors, but in so doing, some department managers saw certain benefits reduced, while other departments received a gain. The blue-collar workers of the police department, for example, bargained for eleven paid holidays for 1982 to 1983, while the fire department rank and file received nine paid holidays. The CSOs of both fire and police departments were given ten and one-half paid holidays under the new plan. They received some benefits the blue-collar workers did not receive, and lost other benefits retained by the blue-collar workers when they bargained.
It is the CSOs' contention that the elimination of some of these fringe benefits resulted in decreased compensation. They claim decreased compensation results in a demotion, and Iowa Code § 400.18 (1983) does not allow such demotions unless there are proper grounds, and only after a vote of the Civil Service Commission. No such grounds or procedure was involved in this situation.
The Civil Service Commission dismissed the appeal of the CSOs on July 16, 1982, but did not make a finding as to whether the actions constituted a demotion. The trial court also dismissed the appeal on October 6, 1983, finding no demotion had occurred.
The scope of our review is de novo. Iowa R.App.P. 14(f)(7). We are to try the case anew and give no weight to the findings of the Commission. Sieg v. Civil Service Comm'n of West Des Moines, 342 N.W.2d 824, 828 (Iowa 1983).
Iowa statutory law regarding civil service is limited in number, and apparently only a small amount of litigation has reached our appellate courts on these issues. We find we must turn to the opinions of experts in municipal law and cases from other jurisdictions, in addition to the statements of the Iowa courts, to answer the question presented.
In order to explore this area of law, we look to the basic policies of civil service law. In constructing a will it has been stated the polestar is the testator's intent. In civil service law it can be said the polestar is the public's good, for this is the reason our civil service laws have developed:
While security of tenure in office is an important object of the civil service system, and it has been said that civil service legislation was enacted for the security of the faithful employee by giving him permanence of employment, at least for the period prescribed by law, and to free such employee from fear of political and personal prejudicial reprisal, civil service laws were intended as a protection for the public as well as for the individual employee. Stated otherwise, civil service was not established for the sole benefit of public employees. In fact, it has been said that the primary purpose of civil service is to enable state, county, and municipal governments to render more efficient services to the public by enabling them to obtain efficient public servants.
15A Am.Jur.2d Civil Service § 1 (1976); See also 3 McQuillan § 12.76 (1982). As explained by the Iowa Supreme Court, the reason civil service employees are accorded certain rights regarding demotions, among other actions, is to provide the public with competent public employees who will not be removed or demoted for improper reasons.
Neither the Civil Service Statute nor the Soldiers Preference Law was intended as a cloak or shield to cover misconduct, incompetency or failure to perform official duties, but such laws were certainly intended to provide some protection and safeguard against arbitrary action of superior officers in removing or discharging such employees for reasons other than those named in the statutes. As has many times been said, the public service is at all times to be the criterion.
As has been succinctly stated, Misbach v. Civil Service Commission, 230 Iowa 323, 327, 297 N.W. 284, 286 (1941).
It is for this reason that the courts have warned:
Constitutional and statutory civil service provisions should be liberally construed in their entirety to further their purpose to put positions in the classified service beyond political control or the exercise of partisanship and personal favoritism. Thus, they should be so construed as to meet the public demand in which they originated for the removal of employment in the public service from partisan politics and the placing of it upon the basis of merit and fitness to be ascertained by competitive examinations open to all.
Airport Commission for the City of Cedar Rapids v. Schade, 257 N.W.2d 500, 503 (Iowa 1977) (citations omitted).
It is also clear from statements made here and in other jurisdictions that the civil service laws were not created in the vein of injecting court involvement into the administration of municipalities. Our court noted this in construing the Soldiers' Preference Act, a statute from which the applicable section regarding demotion of civil service employees was derived. See Iowa Code Annotated § 400.18 (West 1983). Although the specific section of the older statute did not carry over to the current law, we find significant the court's attitude in stating, "There is nothing in the Soldiers' Preference Law, or any other law, which compels a municipality to do its business less efficiently and economically than it is able to do." Babcock v. City of Des Moines, 180 Iowa 1120, 1129, 162 N.W. 763, 763-64 (1917). For this reason the court found the city could decrease the salary of a municipal employee, if it was not done in bad faith and for the purpose of removing the employee. Id.
Among the administrative duties of the city which have been recognized is the authority to establish different salary positions or grades. 1965-66 Op. Att'y...
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