[City of Palo Alto v. Service Employees International Union
(00 C.D.O.S. 28)]

Danton Camm was a lead utility worker employed by the City of Palo Alto.  He repeatedly made threats against fellow employees.  These threats included threatening to shoot them and take other violent action.  In the past the City obtained an injunction prohibiting Camm from having contact with a particular employee.

Following another incident in which Camm made a threat, the City initiated termination proceedings.  Consistent with the City’s policy, the matter was submitted to binding arbitration.  The arbitrator overturned the termination and ordered that Camm be given a written reprimand.  The City sued claiming that the arbitrator’s award should be overturned because it violated public policy.  The Appellate Court disagreed, noting the narrow scope of review of an arbitration award.  More, specifically the court noted:

"However, the City has not established that the public policy entails the obligation to automatically fire any employee who makes a threat of violence regardless of the employee’s intent in uttering it and the actual risk to workplace safety and regardless of the procedural guarantees secured by collective bargaining and set forth in a memorandum of understanding between a union and a city.  While a city might be required to summarily place an employee on administrative leave to fulfill its duty of providing a safe workplace where the city has reasonable proof that an employee has made a credible threat of violence against a co-worker, nothing permits a city to entirely ignore the grievance procedures to which it agreed when following them does not comprise workplace safety.  Likewise, reinstatement of an employee, who had no intention of carrying out his or her threats of violence, is not necessarily precluded because there is no absolute public policy against absolute public policy against.