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Showing posts with label Martin Scheinman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Scheinman. Show all posts

Friday, January 6, 2023

Teachers Accused of Paying For Vax Cards, Not Getting the Shot, Win Their Lawsuit Against the NYC Department of Education


 

The post below is re-printed from my company website, Advocatz.com:


EXCLUSIVE: Teachers Accused of Paying For Fake COVID Vaccination Cards Are Vindicated, Return To Their Jobs and Get Backpay
by Betsy Combier, Advocatz, January 5, 2023


We won!

Decision and ORDER by Judge Abadi in Kambouris et al. v New York City Department of Education, David Banks, Chancellor, and David Weisberg, Deputy Chancellor  (Index No. 518863/2022)

Today, the 30 teachers who were cruelly removed from salary and put on a leave without pay on April 25, 2022, were all given back their jobs, backpay and benefits by Kings County Judge Gina Abadi. I am proud to say that I put the case together and asked Attorney Chad Laveglia for his help. The teachers had asked the UFT General Counsel Beth Norton for help, but she insisted that everyone had to wait until Arbitrator Martin Scheinman made a decision on what should happen to the teachers.

We did not wait for Martin Scheinman, and went ahead with filing a lawsuit independently of the UFT. I’m glad we did, because the UFT case did not win the backpay: ORDER-Bluth.

There were several administrators who were also accused of buying fake COVID Vaccination Cards, sued the NYC DOE and it seems that no decision has been made for them: Kolker letter+Stipulation. I will send Attorney Dina Kolker the Order we got today in our case.

The UFT relies upon Martin Scheinman to decide all matters, and I don't understand why. In this matter, Mr. Scheinman had no role to play, as the issue of the NYC DOE not complying with Education Law 3020 and 3020-a was always clear. The NYC DOE violated the 14th Amendment and protections given in the Law and the UFT contract, and they had to be held accountable. We did that. Judge Abadi agreed with us. Interestingly, no one at the UFT has emailed or contacted anyone in the case to say how great the news is, what happens next, etc. No one has received any help or support from the UFT. Zip. Nada. Many are very angry, mixed with confusion and questions.

I am posting the Scheinman Award June 27 2022 in which Mr. Scheinman wrote that the NYC DOE had to put everyone back on salary and give them a due process hearing.

From day one, which was April 19, 2022, when the Notice was sent out to about 82 educators that the NYC Department of Education was removing each of them from their salary because they had bought their CDC  vaccination cards at Wild Child in Amityville, N.Y., I never believed it.

Tenure Law – Education Law 3020 and 3020-a – cannot be altered, bargained away, or ignored, and this law mandates that before any NYC DOE employees are removed from salary they must be given a due process hearing pursuant to Education Law 3020 and 3020-a.The NYC DOE made the horrendous mistake of saying that anyone who went to Wild Child was guilty of fraud and never got the shot, but paid for a fake card in order to keep working for the Department after the COVID Mandate was put into place.  Huh?

For twenty years I have been studying the inner workings of the NYC DOE, first as a parent advocate, then as an advocate for anyone of any age. Every day I read the law and look up due process in cases filed in New York State or in the U.S. My conclusion is that the NYC DOE files charges against anyone because they want to, or someone has made a complaint. If there are no facts, the NYC DOE Attorneys will make up the “truth” in order to win the only goal: termination.

But I have never heard of nor been involved with any removal of possibly 90+ employees of the DOE all at once because they were allegedly in the same place in the period between September 2021-March 2022. This absurd charge is the same as if you go to a bank to make a deposit, and suddenly a group of people come in with masks and guns and decide to rob the bank. When the police come you are arrested because you were there, so you must be part of the robber gang. This is nuts.

You can read up on this case below:

New York POST:

NYC teachers accused of filing fake COVID vaccine cards must be returned to their jobs

Teachers Accused of Faking Their COVID Vaccination Deserve Due Process

Court Says “No” To NYC DOE Injunction That Keeps Teachers With Alleged “Fake” Vax Cards Off Salary

UPDATES ON The Alleged “Fake” Vaccination Card Fraud Scheme and 82 Educators Employed By the NYC Department of Education

Kings County Supreme Court Judge Gina Abadi joins Judges Ralph Porzio, Arlene Bluth, and Lyle Frank in the “Winners of the Award of Judicial Excellence” given to decisions made in Court that provide the victims the justice they requested.

Let us all hope that these Judges keep on this path and remain committed to correcting the mistakes of NYC  government personnel with malicious goals in mind who destroy the lives of others.

A toast to a great New Year!

Betsy Combier, Editor


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Saturday, July 9, 2022

NY Supreme Court Rules That Teachers Accused of Submitting Fake Vaccination Cards Must Be Placed Back on Salary

 



re-posted from Advocatz.com:

Court Says “No” To NYC DOE Injunction That Keeps Teachers With Alleged “Fake” Vax Cards Off Salary

by Betsy Combier, Advocatz.com, July 8, 2022

Judge Arlene Bluth made an important precedent-setting decision today in the matter of the 82 teachers who were suddenly removed from salary on April 25, 2022  because the NYC Department of Education “believed” they had submitted fake vaccination cards when told to send proof of vaccination in September 2021 under the Citywide Vaccine Mandate. Why do I say precedent-setting? Because Judge Bluth said STOP to the Board of Education of the City of New York after they blatantly violated public policy, the UFT and CSA contracts, Constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, Education Law, as well as countless other state and City laws and rules, by placing 82 people off salary because of a “belief” in their guilt.

Imagine the angst of an employee being accused of committing a felony crime and suddenly placed on leave without pay without any proof or any other information, including when you will be able to tell someone you are innocent and get back on salary.

When I first heard about this I did not believe any of it. Also, Education Law 3020 is very clear on the Constitutional rights to due process:

” No person enjoying the benefits of tenure shall be disciplined or removed during a term of employment except for just cause and in accordance with the procedures specified in section three thousand twenty-a of this article or in accordance with alternate disciplinary procedures contained in a collective bargaining agreement.”

This tenure law was created to stop any principal from suddenly terminating anyone for some nonsensical petty reason.

When Mayoral control took over the NYC Department of Education, Mayor Bloomberg rented huge spaces in District offices around the City ( there were 8 in total, in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx) where tenured educators were reassigned and suspended WITH pay sometimes for up to 15 years, while awaiting a 3020-a hearing or after being found guilty but not terminated at a hearing. These rooms became what is known as the “rubber rooms”. People sat in these rooms ON SALARY but suspended from their teaching duties.

On April 25, 2022 the NYC Department of Education went a step further and unilaterally placed 82 teachers on unpaid leave who had received one or two Pfizer vaccine shots at Wild Child in Amityville. Simply and astonishingly, these 82 people seemed to have been picked randomly and found guilty of the same allegation of wrong-doing as the people cited in a sting operation by the Suffolk County DA – see arrest in Suffolk County of Julie Devuono – because they went to the place of the crime.

This seems to me to be similar to someone going to a bank to withdraw money, and suddenly robbers arrive and try to rob the bank. The police see the innocent person and make a connection to the robbers, and arrest the person trying to get a withdrawal.

Beth Norton, UFT General Counsel

As soon as the April 19 notice of  pending leave without pay on April 25 was received, the UFT General Counsel Beth Norton (pictured above) wrote Liz Vladeck, General Counsel (pictured below) an email letter that basically said, “stop this ridiculousness immediately, and put all people back on salary until a due process hearing has been held.”

Liz Vladeck, NYC DOE General Counsel

On May 3 Beth Norton asked Arbitrator Martin Scheinman to intervene, and he agreed. He issued his Scheinman Award June 27 (see below) saying that the Department must put everyone back on salary until “guilt” is established:

“Leave without pay is an unusual outcome. Yet, I decided it was appropriate for employees whose requests for a medical or religious exemption were denied. This is because such employees intentionally decided to disregard the mandate they be vaccinated by September 27, 2021, the date established by Commissioner Chokshi and Mayor de Blasio.

Implicit in such a designation of leave without pay is the individual failed to comply with the vaccine mandate. Here, there is a dispute whether the employees did or did not comply. Without that being assessed, or at least submitting evidence to show a high likelihood of non-compliance, the predicate for placing an employee on leave without pay does not exist.”

The DOE immediately filed an Article 75 Appeal to keep all 82 teachers suspended without pay and without any due process, but on July 8, 2022 NY Supreme Court Judge Arlene Bluth decided the DOE was wrong. The DOE and UFT will have another chance to make their arguments to Judge Bluth on July 19, 2022.

Meanwhile, 30 of the 82 teachers could not wait for the UFT or DOE to give them the relief they desperately needed, to be placed back on salary. They sued the NYC DOE in Kings County Supreme on June 30, 2022. I helped them put the case into the very amazing hands of Attorney Chad Laveglia who I asked to comment on all of this and the Scheinman Award issued June 27. He said,

“These teachers followed every instruction they were given. They uploaded their vaccination cards as required. Seven months later, the DOE had the audacity to send them an email placing them on leave without pay.  Significantly, they did so in abrogation of the due process that these teachers are constitutionally and legally entitled to. Due process protects the innocent from determinations of guilt based on nothing more than the whims of the accuser. The DOE has no basis in fact or law to summarily discipline these teachers. The DOE’s arbitrary and unlawful actions will be rectified in court.”

Chad, I, and all the unfairly suspended teachers are awaiting the next Court date, and we are hopeful that the denial of Law by the DOE will be stopped, and everyone will placed back on salary with back pay and any other relief that is just. and proper – including their jobs back!

See the papers in the Article 75:

Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York et al v. United Federation of Teachers, Local 2, AFT, AFL-CIO, et al

Index No. 451995/2022

PETITION

Vaccine Mandate August 24

April 19 email

Scheinman Sept 10 Award

Declaration of Impasse

UFT April 21 letter

DOE April 22 letter

UFT May 3 letter

DOE May 4 letter

UFT MAY 6 letter

DOE May 10 letter

UFT May 11 letter

Teachers CBA

2018 Memorandum of Agreement

Scheinman Sept 15 Award

DOE-ORDER_TO_SHOW_CAUSE

DOE Affirmation of Good Faith

Proof of Notice to Respondents

UFT MEMORANDUM_OF_LAW

Bluth signed-ORDER_TO_SHOW_CAUSE

Betsy Combier



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Saturday, March 12, 2022

The U.S. Supreme Court Declines To Hear an Appeal Opposing the NY State COVID Mandate

 


Credit...
James Estrin/The New York Times

The Scheinman Impact Bargaining COVID Mandate continues in New York State. An application to end the COVID Mandate in New York State was made to the U.S. Supreme Court for consideration,  but Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied it; the Appeal was rejected without a full panel hearing.

We believe that the Mandate is unconstitutional, even though we understand that New York State has an interest in protecting the children in public schools. 

However, as we have posted on this website previously, what happens when a public employee has serious medical conditions that prohibit getting any of the vaccines currently available? Are the options only to be terminated outright, retire or resign?

Why are some NYC DOE employees being granted religious exemptions and are now teaching in their classrooms without getting the vaccine, while many others with the same religious beliefs are denied?

Certainly, the bottom line here is that exemptions are being granted on a random and arbitrary basis. Or, all decisions are made depending on who you know, or whether your case is heard by arbitrators who work with Martin Scheinman at the Scheinman Arbitration and Mediation Services. I do not know any exemption granted by any of the SAMS arbitrators.

It is very distressing to see that all the lawsuits which argue that the COVID Mandate is being implemented in an unconstitutional way are being denied.

What is the next step?

We believe that a new lawsuit that balances both the denial of rights and what New York State implies is their "undue burden" should be filed. While today's battle is to undue the "undue burden" which the State argues is the paramount consideration, what will be the focus tomorrow? Where you can work, or live, or.....

No one should give up this fight.

Betsy Combier

 

The Supreme Court rejects a bid by New York teachers to block a city vaccine mandate

By Karen Zraick

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency request that it consider an appeal by a group of New York City teachers seeking to block a vaccine mandate over what they said was a discriminatory religious exemption policy.

The decision, issued by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, was the latest in a series of legal defeats by opponents of New York’s vaccine requirement for municipal workers and it came the same day as the deadline for such workers to get vaccinated or face dismissal.

The plaintiffs in the case had argued that the city’s vaccination requirement amounted to religious discrimination because it unfairly denied applications and did not offer exemptions for employees with unorthodox religious beliefs.

Justice Sotomayor, who oversees cases in the Second Circuit, which includes New York, Connecticut and Vermont, had rejected a challenge to the city’s vaccine mandate in October, when the mandate went into effect for public schoolteachers.


“We are pleased the U.S. Supreme Court has again denied an attempt to block the mandate,” Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said in a statement.

“The city’s goal has always been to vaccinate, not terminate,” he added. “The vast majority of city workers have stepped up to protect themselves and their communities, and the city is grateful to them.”

Barry Black, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, declined to comment on the decision.

The city’s vaccination requirement, which was introduced last fall by Bill de Blasio when he was mayor, has been effective: About 95 percent of the city’s 370,000 workers — including many teachers and other Education Department staff members — had received at least one vaccine dose as of Friday, up from 84 percent when the policy was announced in October.

But about 3,000 city workers were facing the loss of their jobs on Friday if they did not get vaccinated, and 1,000 newly hired were also being required to show proof of vaccination.

Roughly 9,000 other municipal employees were still seeking exemptions or working with their unions to avoid firing, Mayor Eric Adams said on Friday, adding that his administration was still figuring out how many would ultimately be terminated and that a tally would be released over the weekend.


Although the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration last month from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers, it has rejected challenges to local and state government requirements.

In December, the Supreme Court refused to block New York’s vaccine mandate for health care workers who said they had religious objections. A similar case out of Maine ended the same way in October.

The court does not typically include explanations with rulings on emergency applications like the one from the New York City teachers, and Justice Sotomayor did not offer one on Friday.


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Saturday, March 5, 2022

New Rubber Rooms Pop Up Throughout NYC To Warehouse Unvaccinated Employees Who have Won medical or Religious Exemptions

 

                             An attendance worker leaves St. Brigid School at the end of the workday.
Helayne Seidman

The new rubber rooms are here! Evidently, there are new rented spaces holding up to 50 NYC Department of education employees each, all of whom are not vaccinated but have been granted medical or religious exemptions. When the COVID vaccine mandate ends, which it will, these employees, who won their exemptions, will be going back to their workplace.

I know there are many who were granted exemptions who are now quietly back in their classrooms.

If this doesn't sound like chaos, then I do not know what would be considered a mess. 

Why are some people getting religious exemptions and others not? I would like to know. How can the DOE terminate tenured employees without a 3020-a arbitration?

So many questions, so very few answers. 

"Curiouser and curiouser!” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

See

The New York State COVID Vaccine Mandate: How Politics Played a Role

Betsy Combier

NYC teachers with vaccine exemptions are being treated like pariahs
Melissa, Klein, NY POST, March 5, 2022

They are unvaccinated and shunned.

New York City educators granted medical or religious exemptions from the required COVID-19 vaccination were mandated to report to school buildings Monday where some said they were treated like pariahs.

The teachers and other staffers who showed up at a building on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush were met with hostility from vaccinated DOE workers already at the site. The unjabbed were directed to one stairwell — forbidden to walk down the first-floor corridor where the vaccinated staff work, and forbidden from using their restroom.

Unvaccinated teachers at a Flatbush site can not use the same bathroom as vaccinated workers and instead have to share one bathroom with a single toilet that doesn’t flush properly.




Upstairs, those with exemptions made do with only a single toilet that flushed irregularly, or tiny children’s toilets, staffers told The Post. The kiddie commodes were replaced Wednesday night after they complained.

“The whole thing just reeks of discrimination and segregation. I never in my life have ever experienced something like this,” said a teacher who normally works on Staten Island and has a medical exemption for the vaccine.

The teacher, who had been working from her New Jersey home since October, says commuting to the Brooklyn site takes up to three hours one way.

A Staten Island administrator reporting to the building said the DOE also reassigned her from the regular duties she had performed from home since September to work remotely doing what she called busy work.

“I’m miserable because I’m not with children and I’m not with my teachers. I’m sitting here in a room not helping a soul. I feel like we’re being punished,” said the educator who has a medical exemption.

Unvaxxed teachers’ only other bathroom option is to make do
with children’s toilets.



Another teacher assigned to the building, a former parochial school used for several years by the DOE but largely empty recently, said she suffered a concussion Thursday after a window fell out of its frame and hit her on the head.

She said the building was dirty and, with nine other people in a room with her, it was difficult to teach her special education students remotely.

“What they’re doing to us is just disgusting,” she said.

To accommodate other teachers, the DOE rented the former St. Brigid School in the East Village from the Archdiocese of New York.

Special education teacher, Daniel Mickelsen says he usually works with autistic students but has 
instead been passing the day talking to friends or reading the bible since he’s now given little to do.
Helayne Seidman

Daniel Mickelsen, who normally works with autistic children at PS 176X in Co-Op City, said he had been given little to do and was passing the time reading his bible or calling friends.

“They just want us to report because they don’t want people to get paid at home anymore,” said Mickelsen, who has a religious exemption.

The educators at the two sites said they had been handed DOE laptops and given hotspot devices to access the internet because there was insufficient service at the locations.

A September agreement between the United Federation of Teachers and the DOE allowing for the exemptions says that those granted one would not be allowed to enter school buildings, but “may” be assigned to work at administrative offices, according to a copy of the document seen by The Post.

The DOE would not say why the educators were being assigned to work sites now or the provide the cost of renting the East Village school.

A spokesman said 300 staffers had exemptions and were working from four sites, but would not disclose the locations of the others. The department said the windows had been inspected at the Flatbush site and no issues were found.

“Per our contractual agreements, staff with approved exemptions continue serving the public in buildings that our incredible facilities teams ensured are quality working environments,” said DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer.

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