A stalled wage dispute between Miami-Dade County and a group of county employees seems no closer to concluding in light of an opinion issued by a South Florida appellate court.

On Wednesday the Third District Court of Appeal denied a petition for writ of certiorari, as well as an alternate petition for writ of mandamus, filed by Eduardo Alfonso and 10 co-plaintiffs.

Alfonso, who works for Miami-Dade's Animal Services Department, filed suit against the county in May 2017 alongside Zoo Miami staff members and other public sector employees. According to an amended complaint filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, the plaintiffs alleged the county had committed a breach of contract by retroactively reducing their agreed-upon salaries after being hired. The suit contends the claims constitute “separate agreements made between the county and each of the plaintiffs,” and although the employees are covered by the collective bargaining agreement between the county and the AFSCME Local 199 union, none of their grievances are subject to the grievance and arbitration procedure established by the agreement.

While the complaint notes “Local 199 itself has taken the position that claims that are based on separate agreements between the county and Local 199 members, including claims that are the subject of this action, are not grievable under the CBA,” the Third DCA's opinion said the union and agreement are what caused Miami-Dade County to reduce the plaintiffs' pay.

“The county took this action because the petitioners' union, AFSCME Local 199, maintained that the county's hiring of an employee at a rate higher than step 1 violated … the collective bargaining agreement,” the order said, referencing the conventional starting salary for Miami-Dade County employees. In January 2018, now-retired Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Dennis Murphy stayed the case and ordered the defendants to present evidence that they had exhausted the remedies outlined in the grievance arbitration procedures in the collective bargaining agreement.

After entering several motions to lift the stay as well as well as submitting documentation of five plaintiffs' unfair labor practice charges against AFSCME Local 199 to the trial court, the plaintiffs requested in February that the court dismiss the case in order to facilitate an appeal. Following yet another refusal, the plaintiffs entered an appeal with the Third DCA, asking the appellate panel to either reverse the lower court' stay of the litigation or compel it to dismiss.

Despite the plaintiffs' insistence of being in “legal limbo,” the appeals court declined to enter either of the orders they sought.

Read the appellate opinion: 

“Notwithstanding petitioners' legal limbo, we are unable to conclude that the trial court, in its refusal to lift the stay, somehow departed from the essential requirements of law,” the opinion said. “While we are not unsympathetic to Petitioners' posture, we deny the petition for writ of certiorari.”

The order also denied the request for mandamus relief, noting, “while mandamus is available to compel a lower tribunal to issue a ruling that it has delayed unreasonably, mandamus is not available, as petitioners seek here, to compel a trial court to make a particular ruling.”

“Indeed, mandamus is available only when a trial court fails to perform a ministerial duty,” the opinion said. ”It is not an appropriate vehicle to compel a trial court to perform a discretionary action.”

Assistant County Attorney Leona McFarlane told the Daily Business Review the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office does not comment on pending litigation. The defendants asserted the plaintiffs remained bound by the collective bargaining agreement in their response to the second renewed motion to lift the stay.

The plaintiffs' legal counsel, Torricella Law litigator Maurice Baumgarten, declined to comment, citing ongoing proceedings with the appellate court.

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