Reinstate 3 Social Workers, D.C. Told
Jacks Case Firings Were Unfair, an Arbitrator Rules

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2008

Three of the social workers fired for their involvement in the high-profile Banita Jacks case were unjustly terminated by the mayor and should get their jobs back, according to a D.C. arbitrator's ruling.

Days after Jacks was found with the bodies of her four dead daughters inside her home and was arrested in their killings in January, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) fired the six employees at the Child and Family Services Agency who had anything to do with the case.

Fenty held a news conference, announced the firings and was applauded for taking charge.

But in his ruling this week, arbitrator John C. Truesdale wrote, "Basic notions of fairness and due process have not been met in this case."

He ordered the city to take back the workers, expunge the termination from their records, reinstate their pay and benefits, and give them back pay, with interest, for the nine months they were away from the agency.

The Fenty administration will appeal the arbitrator's decision to the Public Employee Relations Board, spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said.

"It's only a recommendation," Hobson said. "And we disagree with the findings."

Union officials don't believe that the board will accept an appeal.

"There's no basis for an appeal," said Al Bilik of District Council 20 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Arbitration makes it final and binding."

The three nonmanagement social workers, who belong to AFSCME, appealed Fenty's action. A city hearing officer upheld their appeal in March, but the agency said it wouldn't take them back, so the case went to arbitration.

Truesdale's ruling was, in places, a biting rebuke of Fenty's actions.

"Not only had the Mayor ordered their dismissal without any investigation, it is undisputed that he issued a further order prohibiting any consideration of the Hearing Officer's recommendation to overturn the dismissals," it said.

According to the arbitration hearing, the workers were fired through letters to their homes or surprise meetings that pointed out a technical mistake they made in the Jacks case. Taken individually, each of the workers made mistakes that called for discipline, not termination.

"The idea of acting swiftly to mete out discipline in such a horrible incident is very appealing to the public," said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large). "But at the time, it seemed hasty to some of us. And the arbitrator's decision confirms it."

The case of the four girls, ages 5, 6, 11 and 16, spurred a maelstrom in a fragile city agency responsible for the welfare of abused and neglected children. The girls' bodies were discovered when U.S. marshals served a routine eviction notice to their mother, who had been living with the corpses in a rowhouse in Southeast Washington. Jacks, 33, was arrested and charged with killing her children.

The girls were killed sometime in late spring or summer, authorities believe. But they were alive when a school social worker, with growing alarm, tried to get child welfare workers to look in on the family.

At a news conference in January, Fenty played two phone calls from the increasingly frustrated Booker T. Washington Public Charter School social worker, who might have been one of the last people to see the girls alive.

The hotline calls, which did not get a response, underscored the agency's failure to help, city officials said in January.

But Fenty's swift action showed many social workers that "he ignores the unions," said Deborah Courtney, president of Local 2401 of AFSCME, which represents employees in the Department of Human Services.

"Because of these firings, other social workers don't feel like their rights are being protected," she said.

The other three employees who were fired were management and not represented by the union.

The firings began a downward spiral in an agency still recovering from years of problems. Workers said the firings sent morale plunging. Since January, nearly a quarter of the workforce -- 59 social workers -- has left the agency, according to the department's statistics.

In that time, calls to the agency increased by 600 percent, according to department statistics.

Dolores Williams, who has been a social worker with the CFSA for 13 years, said the caseloads are increasing and morale is still down.

She got five cases this week, she said, and is now carrying more than 20. "I used to have no more than 12 cases before Banita Jacks," Williams said. "I was at work until 9:30 last night [Thursday]. I was back at quarter to 8 today. We're working hard, and I just don't know where we'll ever have the time to close all these cases."

Wayne Enoch, a CFSA program monitor, said social workers who are feeling overworked and unprotected might feel rejuvenated by the arbitrator's ruling.

"This could help," Enoch said. "This might tell people that the system works."